Review of patient safety incidents submitted from Critical Care Units in England & Wales to the UK National Patient Safety Agency

[Analysis of an incident notification system and register in a critical care unit]

OBJECTIVE

To analyse the incident communicated through a notification system and register in a critical care unit.

METHODOLOGY

A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted by performing an analysis of the records of incidents communicated anonymously and voluntarily from January 2007 to December 2013 in a critical care unit of adult patients with severe trauma.

STUDY VARIABLES

incident type and class, professional reports, and suggestions for improvement measures. A descriptive analysis was performed on the variables.

RESULTS

Out of a total of 275 incidents reported, 58.5% of them were adverse events. Incident distributed by classes: medication, 33.7%; vascular access-drainage-catheter-sensor, 19.6%; devices-equipment, 13.3%, procedures, 11.5%; airway tract and mechanical ventilation, 10%; nursing care, 4.1%; inter-professional communication, 3%; diagnostic test, 3%; patient identification, 1.1%, and transfusion 0.7%. In the medication group, administrative errors accounted for a total of 62%; in vascular access-drainage-catheter-sensor group, central venous lines, a total of 27%; in devices and equipment group, respirators, a total of 46.9%; in airway self-extubations, a total of 32.1%. As regards to medication errors, 62% were incidents without damage. Incident notification by profession: doctors, 43%, residents, 5.6%, nurses, 51%, and technical assistants, 0.4%.

CONCLUSIONS

Adverse events are the most communicated incidents. The events related to medication administration are the most frequent, although most of them were without damage. Nurses and doctors communicate the incidents with the same frequency. In order to highlight the low incident notification despite it being an anonymous and volunteer system, therefore, it is suggested to study measurements to increase the level of communication.

Changes in the Rates of Reported Pressure Ulcers in Response to a Regional Critical Care Quality Improvement Project

We used patient safety incident reports to monitor rates of pressure ulcers in response to a skin care bundle introduced at the start of 2012 across the North West of England. The bundle incorporated skin surface interface, patient positioning, incontinence and skin management and improved nutrition. We compared changes in the rates of index sores (category two to four ulcers involving the sacrum, buttocks, genitals or heals) with other sores and wounds. Rates of all reported pressure ulcers increased from 4.1 to 7.0 per 1,000 days between 2009 and 2012 (p<0.001) while the rate of ‘index sores' decreased from 3.1 to 2.0 per 1,000 days between 2011 and 2012 (p<0.001). There was a wide variation in reported pressure ulcers between different units (interquartile range 2.1 to 9.9 per 1,000 days). A care bundle can reduce the rates of significant pressure ulcers. Without ensuring reliable compliance, wide variation remains between units.

Impact of acute stress on resident performance during simulated resuscitation episodes: a prospective randomized cross-over study

BACKGROUND

Medical trainees have identified stress as an important contributor to their medical errors in acute care environments.

PURPOSES

The objective of this study was to determine if the addition of acute stressors to simulated resuscitation scenarios would impact on residents' simulated clinical performance.

METHODS

Fifty-four residents completed a control and a high-stress simulated scenario on separate visits. Stress measures were collected before and after scenarios. Two assessors independently evaluated residents' videotaped performance.

RESULTS

Both control and high-stress scenarios triggered significant stress responses among participants; however, stress responses were not significantly different between control and high-stress conditions. No difference in performance was found between control and high-stress conditions (F value = 2.84, p = .098).

CONCLUSIONS

Residents exposed to simulated resuscitation scenarios experienced significant stress responses irrespective of the presence of acute stressors during these scenarios. This anticipatory stressful response could impact on resident learning and performance and should be further explored.

Human factors in critical care: towards standardized integrated human-centred systems of work

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Improvements in safety and quality benefit from a systems approach. Human factors is the study and practice of the relationship between humans and systems. This review examines recent advances in human factors in healthcare.

RECENT FINDINGS

Early studies focused on understanding incidents, and on the translation of principles from aviation to healthcare, which demonstrated a useful but limited application of the human factors approach. More recent studies have begun to address the complexity of the relationship between human behaviour and technology, tasks, environment and organization. Human factors frameworks have been usefully applied that aid in these complex considerations, providing a better understanding of the healthcare system, and a much broader range of solutions to problems than checklists, protocols or training. In particular, in improving equipment design and procurement; improving job design by understanding the demands and tasks of individual healthcare practitioners; in improving what and when training is delivered; and the integration of these complex system components into a coherent whole.

SUMMARY

The human factors approach is not yet mature in healthcare, but the importance is being increasingly recognized, and the breadth of application continually expanded.

Development of a team performance scale to assess undergraduate health professionals

PURPOSE

Interprofessional simulation-based team training is strongly endorsed as a potential solution for improving teamwork in health care delivery. Unfortunately, there are few teamwork evaluation instruments. The present study developed and tested the psychometric characteristics of the newly developed KidSIM Team Performance Scale checklist.

METHOD

A quasi-experimental research design engaging a convenience sample of 196 undergraduate medical, nursing, and respiratory therapy students was completed in the 2010-2011 academic year. Multidisciplinary student teams participated in a simulation-based curriculum that included the completion of two acute illness management scenarios, resulting in 282 independent reviews by evaluators from medicine, nursing, and respiratory therapy. The authors investigated the underlying factors of the performance checklist and examined the performance scores of an experimental and a control team-training-curriculum group.

RESULTS

Participation in the supplemental team training curriculum was related to higher team performance scores (P < .001). All teams at Time 2 achieved higher scores than at Time 1 (P < .05). The reliability coefficient for the total performance scale was α = 0.90. Factor analysis supported a three-factor solution (accounting for 67.9% of the variance) with an emphasis on roles and responsibilities (five items) and communication (six items) subscale factors.

CONCLUSIONS

When simulation is used in acute illness management training, the KidSIM Team Performance Scale provides reliable, valid score interpretation of undergraduates' team process based on communication effectiveness and identification of roles and responsibilities. Implementation of a supplementary team training curriculum significantly enhances students' performance in multidisciplinary simulation-based scenarios at the undergraduate level.

A pilot study of the implementation of WHO surgical checklist in Finland: improvements in activities and communication

BACKGROUND

World Health Organisation (WHO) has introduced a surgical safety checklist that has reduced post-operative morbidity and mortality. Prior to national checklist implementation, we assessed its possible impact on the operating room (OR) process, safety-related issues and communication among surgical staff in a high-income country.

METHODS

In four university and teaching hospitals, a structured questionnaire was delivered to OR personnel involved in consecutive operations over 4-6 weeks before and after the checklist implementation. The questionnaire resembled the WHO checklist and comprised multiple-choice questions relating to performance of safety checks and communication. Anaesthesiologists (A), surgeons (S) and circulating nurses (CN) answered the questions independently. The WHO checklist was modified for national needs.

RESULTS

Questionnaires were returned from 1748 operations, 901 before and 847 after the checklist. Patient's identity was more often confirmed (A: 62.7% vs. 84.0%, S: 71.6% vs. 85.5%, CN: 81.6% vs. 94.2%, P < 0.001) and knowledge of names and roles among team members (A: 65.7% vs. 81.8%, S: 71.1% vs. 83.6%, CN: 87.7% vs. 93.2%, P < 0.01) improved with the checklist. Anaesthesiologists and surgeons discussed critical events pre-operatively (A: 22.0% vs. 42.6%, S: 34.7% vs. 46.2%, P < 0.001) more frequently after the checklist. In addition, fewer communication failures (43 vs. 17, P < 0.05) were reported with checklist.

CONCLUSIONS

The checklist increased OR teams' awareness of patient-related issues, the procedure and expected risks. It also enhanced team communication and prevented communication failures. Our findings support use of the WHO checklist in various surgical fields.

Major sources of critical incidents in intensive care

Introduction

In recent years, critical incident (CI) reporting has increasingly been regarded as part of ongoing quality management. CI databanks also aim to improve health and safety issues for patients as well as staff. The aim of this study was to identify frequent causes of adverse events in critical care with the potential to harm patients, staff or visitors by analysing data from a voluntary and optionally anonymous critical incident reporting system.

Methods

The study includes all critical incidents reported during a 90-month period in a 13-bed adult general intensive care unit (ICU). Reporting of incidents was performed via an electronic reporting system or by a manual critical incident report. All CIs were classified in the following main categories: equipment, administration, pharmaceuticals, clinical practice, and health & safety hazards. The overall distribution of incidents within the different categories was compared with the regional database of ICUs in the Cheshire and Mersey region of northwest England for 2008.

Results

A total of 1127 CIs were reported during the study period. The frequencies within the main categories were: equipment 338 (30%), clinical practice 257 (22.8%), pharmaceuticals 238 (21.1%), administration 213 (18.9%), health and safety hazards 81 (7.2%). The regional database had a similar frequency of critical incidents within the different categories, suggesting that our results may reflect a general distribution pattern of CIs in intensive care.

Conclusions

Critical incident reporting helps to identify frequent causes of adverse events in critical care. Improvements in quality of care following implementation of preventative strategies such as introduction of regular equipment training sessions will have to be assessed further in future studies.