Patient safety in the context of neonatal intensive care: research and educational opportunities

Continuous improvement of non-emergent neonatal intubations in a level IV NICU

OBJECTIVE

We sought to improve practices and outcomes related to non-emergent neonatal intubations in a level IV academic Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

STUDY DESIGN

A multidisciplinary team created guidelines for non-emergent neonatal intubations. In period 1, premedication practices were standardized. In period 2, paralytic use and video laryngoscope use were recommended. Premedication and video laryngoscopy practices were assessed along with number of intubation attempts and frequency of bradycardia and desaturation.

RESULTS

636 intubations performed by neonatology fellows and neonatal advanced practice providers were reviewed over six academic years. Two academic years were included in each of the following study periods: baseline, period 1, and period 2. In our unit, compliance with recommended premedication practices and administration of paralytic medication has increased considerably, and video laryngoscopy is now utilized in most of our procedures. The frequency of intubation success on the first attempt has increased, and the frequency of both bradycardia and desaturation during intubation has decreased. In our analysis, paralytic use (AOR 2.41, 95 CI (1.53, 3.81)) and the combination of paralytic and video laryngoscopy (AOR 4.07, 95 CI (2.09, 7.92)) are associated with increased odds of intubating successfully on the first attempt.

CONCLUSIONS

This initiative increased the use of standardized premedication, paralytic medication and video laryngoscopy for non-emergent neonatal intubations with temporally associated improvement in patient outcomes including fewer intubation attempts and reduction in physiologic instability.

Medication-related incidents in acute care hospitals among different age groups: An analysis of national patient safety report data

PURPOSE

This study aimed to perform a nationwide analysis of medication errors (MEs) from hospitals using national reporting system data and to compare the ME patterns among different age groups.

METHODS

We analyzed medication-related incidents in acute care hospitals reported to the Korean Patient Safety Reporting and Learning System (KOPS), which is a patient safety reporting system, from July 2016 to December 2020. The stages of the medication use process, type of errors, medication class involved in MEs, and degree of harm were analyzed.

RESULTS

Among a total of 5071 medication-related incidents, 37.7% (1911 cases) were incidents that caused patient harm and 1.2% caused long-term, permanent, and fatal harm. The proportion of medication-related incidents that resulted in harm was the highest among the <1-year-old age group (67 cases, 51.5%), followed by the elderly (≥ 65 years) (828 cases, 40.9%). The cases leading to patient death were most frequently reported in patients aged ≥65 years. Medication-related incidents occurred mainly in the administration stage (2954 cases, 58.3%), and wrong dose was the most frequently reported ME type. The most prevalent medication class occurring in the 20-64-year age group (256 cases, 11.7%) was 'antibacterials for systemic use', whereas 'contrast media' (236 cases, 11.6%) and 'blood substitutes and perfusion solutions' (98 cases, 19.3%) were the most prevalent drug classes in the ≥65- and <20-year-old age groups, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

It is necessary to establish guidelines for the prevention of medication-related incidents according to the medication use process and patient age group.

Development and validation of a predictive tool for adverse drug reactions in neonates under intensive care

AIMS

Neonates hospitalized in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) commonly experience adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Thus, we aimed to develop and validate a tool for predicting ADRs in neonates hospitalized in NICUs.

METHODS

A nested case-control study in an open cohort with neonates admitted to the NICU of a maternity hospital in Natal, Brazil was conducted from January 2019 to January 2022 [Correction added on 4 December 2023, after first online publication: 2023 has been changed to 2019 in the preceding sentence.]. Neonates with ADR were randomly paired with 2 controls. For the development of the tool, a multivariate logistic regression was applied on 2/3 of the sample (cases with respective controls). The model's fit was evaluated using the Hosmer-Lemeshow test for calibration and the Brier score for performance assessment. Validation of the tool was performed by determining the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve with bootstrap adjusted c-statistics.

RESULTS

In all, 450 neonates (150 cases and 300 controls) were included in the study. We identified 5 independent risk factors for ADR, 4 related to the neonate (current mechanical ventilation, heart rate ≥178 beats/min, intravenous medications, ≥5 prescription medications) and 1 to the mother (gestational hypertension). The tool had a classification cut-off point of ≥15, and its total score ranged from 0 to 34. In validation, the tool had an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.74 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.66-0.81) with sensitivity of 52.02% (95% CI 47.40-56.64) and specificity of 81.35% (95% CI 77.75-84.95).

CONCLUSION

The tool demonstrated adequate discriminative ability and utilized 5 commonly monitored variables in the NICU.

Infection prevention and control in neonatal units: An ethnographic study of social and clinical interactions among healthcare providers and mothers in Ghana

INTRODUCTION

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a global health challenge, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Infection prevention and control (IPC) remains an important strategy for preventing HAIs and improving the quality of care in hospital wards. The social environment and interactions in hospital wards are important in the quest to improve IPC. This study explored care practices and the interactions between healthcare providers and mothers in the neonatal intensive care units (NICU) in two Ghanaian hospitals and discusses the relevance for IPC.

METHODOLOGY

This study draws on data from an ethnographic study using in-depth interviews, focus group discussions involving 43 healthcare providers and 72 mothers, and participant observations in the wards between September 2017 and June 2019. The qualitative data were analysed thematically using NVivo 12 to facilitate coding.

FINDINGS

Mothers of hospitalized babies faced various challenges in coping with the hospital environment. Mothers received sparse information about their babies' medical conditions and felt intimidated in the contact with providers. Mothers strategically positioned themselves as learners, guardians, and peers to enable them to navigate the clinical and social environment of the wards. Mothers feared that persistent requests for information might result in their being labelled "difficult mothers" or might impact the care provided to their babies. Healthcare providers also shifted between various positionings as professionals, caregivers, and gatekeepers, with the tendency to exercise power and maintain control over activities on the ward.

CONCLUSION

The socio-cultural environment of the wards, with the patterns of interaction and power, reduces priority to IPC as a form of care. Effective promotion and maintenance of hygiene practices require cooperation, and that healthcare providers and mothers find common grounds from which to leverage mutual support and respect, and through this enhance care for mothers and babies, and develop stronger motivation for promoting IPC.

The Evolution of Neonatal Patient Safety

Human factors science teaches us that patient safety is achieved not by disciplining individual health care professionals for mistakes, but rather by designing systems that acknowledge human limitations and optimize the work environment for them. Incorporating human factors principles into simulation, debriefing, and quality improvement initiatives will strengthen the quality and resilience of the process improvements and systems changes that are developed. The future of patient safety in neonatology will require continued efforts to engineer and re-engineer systems that support the humans who are at the interface of delivering safe patient care.

Parent Perception of Child Safety following Admission to a Neonatal Unit

OBJECTIVE

Parent partnership is a key aspect of neonatal hospital care. However, there is a lack of information regarding parents' perception of neonatal safety. This study explores parents' opinions on safety during their child's hospitalization to identify points for improvement.

STUDY DESIGN

We used a questionnaire, validated by the Spanish National Healthcare Authorities, on perception of safety with respect to hospital health care.

RESULTS

Thirty-seven parents of 20 newborns treated in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and 139 parents of newborns in intermediate care (IC) participated in this study. With regard to overall perception of safety, more than 96% of parents felt "very safe" or "fairly safe." In the NICU, an area for improvement detected was to ask parents more often their opinion about the care or treatment provided to their child. In IC, three points for improvement were identified from the group of parents whose child was admitted directly to IC: the consistency of the information received, the request for consent for procedures, and the request for an opinion on their child's care and treatment. Only four parents reported that their child suffered an incident. Regarding incident management, parents were not completely satisfied with the information they received.

CONCLUSION

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of parent perception of patient safety in a neonatal unit using a validated questionnaire. Our findings suggest that parents can provide valuable information on neonatal safety, which can then be used to identify areas for improvement.

KEY POINTS

· There is a lack of information regarding parents' perception of neonatal safety.. · This study explores parent's opinion about safety of their child during the hospitalization.. · Our findings suggest that parents can provide valuable information to identify improvement areas..

"What's in a name?" Identification of newborn infants at birth using their given names

OBJECTIVE

To determine the proportion of pregnant women who selected names for their babies to be born and were willing to disclose them for use in hospital systems, thereby potentially reducing infant identification errors.

STUDY DESIGN

Survey of pregnant women admitted to postpartum or antepartum units at a large academic hospital. Descriptive analyses were conducted to determine the proportion who had chosen names prior to delivery. Chi-square tests and calculated odds ratios assessed the association with demographic and pregnancy factors.

RESULTS

Of postpartum participants, 79.0% had names for their newborns at birth. This proportion was significantly lower in self-identified non-Hispanic, white, and married women. Of antepartum participants, 65.7% had selected a name at the time of survey.

CONCLUSION

Most participants had names chosen for use at birth. This finding was consistent across demographic and pregnancy characteristics, supporting the feasibility of using given names for newborns in hospital systems at birth.

An educational programme in neonatal intensive care units (SEPREVEN): a stepped-wedge, cluster-randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Patients in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) are at high risk of adverse events. The effects of medical and paramedical education programmes to reduce these have not yet been assessed.

METHODS

In this multicentre, stepped-wedge, cluster-randomised controlled trial done in France, we randomly assigned 12 NICUs to three clusters of four units. Eligible neonates were inpatients in a participating unit for at least 2 days, with a postmenstrual age of 42 weeks or less on admission. Each cluster followed a 4-month multifaceted programme including education about root-cause analysis and care bundles. The primary outcome was the rate of adverse events per 1000 patient-days, measured with a retrospective trigger-tool based chart review masked to allocation of randomly selected files. Analyses used mixed-effects Poisson modelling that adjusted for time. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02598609.

FINDINGS

Between Nov 23, 2015, and Nov 2, 2017, event rates were analysed for 3454 patients of these 12 NICUs for 65 830 patient-days. The event rate per 1000 patient-days reduced significantly from the control to the intervention period (33·9 vs 22·6; incidence rate ratio 0·67; 95% CI 0·50-0·88; p=0·0048).

INTERPRETATION

A multiprofessional safety-promoting programme in NICUs reduced the rate of adverse events and severe and preventable adverse events in highly vulnerable patients. This programme could significantly improve care offered to critically ill neonates.

FUNDING

Solidarity and Health Ministry, France.

Standardizing premedication for non-emergent neonatal tracheal intubations improves compliance and patient outcomes

OBJECTIVE

We sought to standardize and improve compliance with evidence-based premedication for non-emergent neonatal intubations in two academic-affiliated Neonatal Intensive Care Units.

STUDY DESIGN

A multidisciplinary team created guidelines and electronic medical record order sets for intubation. Compliance with recommended premedication, number of intubation attempts, and frequency of bradycardia and desaturation were assessed.

RESULTS

387 intubation procedures were reviewed. Provision of recommended premedication increased by 36% and 75% at the level III and IV units, respectively. Decreased frequency of bradycardia during intubation (p = 0.0003) occurred in the level III unit. A reduction in number of intubation attempts (p ≤ 0.001), improvement in first-attempt intubation success (p ≤ 0.001), and decreased frequency of bradycardia (p = 0.01) and desaturation (p = 0.02) during intubation occurred in the level IV unit.

CONCLUSIONS

This quality improvement initiative improved standardized premedication compliance and decreased adverse events associated with non-emergent neonatal intubations in two separate units.

Defining the Epidemiology of Safety Risks in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Patients Requiring Surgery

OBJECTIVE

The aim of the study was to determine the incidence, type, severity, preventability, and contributing factors of nonroutine events (NREs)-events perceived by care providers or skilled observers as a deviations from optimal care based on the clinical situation-in the perioperative (i.e., preoperative, operative, and postoperative) care of surgical neonates in the neonatal intensive care unit and operating room.

METHODS

A prospective observational study of noncardiac surgical neonates, who received preoperative and postoperative neonatal intensive care unit care, was conducted at an urban academic children's hospital between November 1, 2016, and March 31, 2018. One hundred twenty-nine surgical cases in 109 neonates were observed. The incidence and description of NREs were collected via structured researcher-administered survey tool of involved clinicians. Primary measurements included clinicians' ratings of NRE severity and contributory factors and trained research assistants' ratings of preventability.

RESULTS

One or more NREs were reported in 101 (78%) of 129 observed cases for 247 total NREs. Clinicians reported 2 (2) (median, interquartile range) NREs per NRE case with a maximum severity of 3 (1) (possible range = 1-5). Trained research assistants rated 47% of NREs as preventable and 11% as severe and preventable. The relative risks for National Surgical Quality Improvement Program - pediatric major morbidity and 30-day mortality were 1.17 (95% confidence interval = 0.92-1.48) and 1.04 (95% confidence interval = 1.00-1.08) in NRE cases versus non-NRE cases.

CONCLUSIONS

The incidence of NREs in neonatal perioperative care at an academic children's hospital was high and of variable severity with a myriad of contributory factors.

Associations between safety perceptions and medical error reporting among neonatal intensive care unit staff

INTRODUCTION

Critically ill neonates are particularly susceptible to medical errors; however, few studies have evaluated NICU safety climate in the context of medical error reporting. This study aims to identify the association between perceptions of safety and culture among NICU staff with medical error reporting behaviours.

METHODS

This study used a convenience sample of 79 NICU staff members (38 Nurses and 41 Respiratory Therapists). Questionnaires consisted of demographic factors (years of experience, sex and education), the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) and hypothetical medical error reporting scenarios (categorized into minor harm or major harm). The SAQ consists of six domains: job satisfaction, teamwork climate, safety climate, perceptions of management, working conditions and stress recognition. Scores ranged from 0-5, with a 5 indicating a more positive perception. Logistic regression was used to determine statistically significant predictors for each individual harm scenario (odds of being very likely/likely to report vs. all other responses).

RESULTS

Among those who completed the study, approximately 84.8% were female. Safety attitude domain scores were similar for both NICU respiratory therapists and nurses across all domains except for job satisfaction and stress. Respiratory therapists reported higher levels of job satisfaction compared to nurses (24 vs. 23, respectively, p = 0.01). However, nurses reported higher levels of stress management compared to respiratory therapists (12 vs. 9, respectively, p < 0.01). While we did not find a significant association between safety attitudes and hypothetical medical error reporting, NICU staff overall were more likely to report major medical errors compared to minor medical errors.

CONCLUSIONS

This study suggests that safety climate may not play a significant role in promoting medical error reporting in the NICU setting.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE

Interventions aimed at increasing medical error reporting should also incorporate established employees rather than targeting new employees only.

Economics at the frontline: Tools and tips for busy clinicians

Frontline providers of neonatal care have a moral imperative to enhance value and inform senior administrators of how to most efficiently spend healthcare dollars. This article argues that the frontline is the ideal setting to pursue these efforts, offers recommendations for how to measure value, and describes five simple yet effective concrete tools that can improve value. It concludes with tips on advancing a value-added agenda through the Model for Improvement and advice for teams on ways of approaching senior leaders to help align unit-level aims with system-level goals and mission. Armed with these instruments, multidisciplinary teams can help ensure that neonatal care remains at the forefront of high-value healthcare.

A study of medication errors during the prescription stage in the pediatric critical care services of a secondary-tertiary level public hospital

Background

Medication Errors (MEs) are considered the most common type of error in pediatric critical care services. Moreover, the ME rate in pediatric patients is up to three times higher than the rate for adults. Nevertheless, information in pediatric population is still limited, particularly in emergency/critical care practice. The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze MEs in the pediatric critical care services during the prescription stage in a Mexican secondary-tertiary level public hospital.

Methods

A cross-sectional study to detect MEs was performed in all pediatric critical care services [pediatric emergency care (PEC), pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and neonatal intermediate care unit (NIMCU)] of a public teaching hospital. A pharmacist identified MEs by direct observation as the error detection method and MEs were classified according to the updated classification for medication errors by the Ruíz-Jarabo 2000 working group. Thereafter, these were subclassified in clinically relevant MEs.

Results

In 2347 prescriptions from 301 patients from all critical care services, a total of 1252 potential MEs (72%) were identified, and of these 379 were considered as clinically relevant due to their potential harm. The area with the highest number of MEs was PICU (n = 867). The ME rate was > 50% in all pediatric critical care services and PICU had the highest ME/patient index (13.1). The most frequent MEs were use of abbreviations (50.9%) and wrong speed rate of administration (11.4%), and only 11.7% of the total drugs were considered as ideal medication orders.

Conclusion

Clinically relevant medication errors can range from mild skin reactions to severe conditions that place the patient’s life at risk. The role of pharmacists through the detection and timely intervention during the prescription and other stages of the medication use process can improve drug safety in pediatric critical care services.

Threats to Patient Safety in the Inpatient Maternity Setting

As part of our special topics issue on inpatient maternity care, experts were asked to offer their thoughts about the main issues putting mothers and babies at risk in the maternity inpatient setting and what quality and safety practices may be beneficial in keeping them safe from harm. Each of the experts has a unique perspective. Loraine O'Neill was one of the original perinatal patient safety nurses who were established as part of an effort by a professional liability company to promote patient safety in birthing hospitals that they covered in several states (). She now is the perinatal patient safety officer in a large academic medical center in New York City. Lisa Miller is a well-known expert on fetal assessment during labor, certified nurse midwife, attorney, educator, patient safety expert, and editor of a popular fetal monitoring textbook (). She has taught fetal monitoring to nurses, midwives, and physicians in multidisciplinary groups all over the United States and consulted on numerous patient safety initiatives. Annie Rohan is a dual-certified neonatal and pediatric nurse practitioner with a 30-plus year clinical practice career with infants, children, and families facing critical and chronic illness. She is currently a healthcare researcher, and oversees advanced practice and doctoral nursing programs at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.

DRUG-RELATED PROBLEMS IN CARDIAC NEONATES UNDER INTENSIVE CARE

Objective:

To determine the frequency and nature of the Drug Related Problems (DRP) in neonates with cardiac diseases admitted to an Intensive Care Unit.

Methods:

This prospective cross-sectional study was developed at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of a teaching maternity hospital in Brazil from January 2014 to December 2016. All neonates diagnosed with any heart disease (congenital heart disease, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias, etc.) and who were admitted to the NICU for more than 24 hours with at least one prescribed drug were included in the study. Demographic and clinical data were collected from the records of the institution’s clinical pharmacy service. DRP and their respective interventions were independently reviewed and classified by two pharmacists. DRP classification was performed through the Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe v6.2 system.

Results:

122 neonates were included in the study. The frequency of neonates exposed to DRP was 76.4% (confidence interval of 95% [95%CI] 65.9–82.0), with a mean of 3.2±3.8 cases/patient. In total, 390 DRP were identified, of which 49.0% were related to “treatment effectiveness”, 46.7% to “adverse reactions” and 1.0% to “treatment costs”. The medicines most involved in DRP were Vancomycin (10.2%; n=46), Meropenem (8.0%; n=36) and Furosemide (7.1%; n=32). Pharmacists performed 331 interventions, of which 92.1% were accepted by physicians and nurses.

Conclusions:

The study showed that DRP are very frequent in patients with cardiac diseases hospitalized in the NICU, predominating problems related to the effectiveness and safety of the drug treatment.

An Ethnography of Parents' Perceptions of Patient Safety in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

BACKGROUND

Parents of neonates are integral components of patient safety in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), yet their views are often not considered. By understanding how parents perceive patient safety in the NICU, clinicians can identify appropriate parent-centered strategies to involve them in promoting safe care for their infants.

PURPOSE

To determine how parents of neonates conceptualize patient safety in the NICU.

METHODS

We conducted qualitative interviews with 22 English-speaking parents of neonates from the NICU and observations of various parent interactions within the NICU over several months. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis. Findings were critically reviewed through peer debriefing.

FINDINGS

Parents perceived safe care through their observations of clinicians being present, intentional, and respectful when adhering to safety practices, interacting with their infant, and communicating with parents in the NICU. They described partnering with clinicians to promote safe care for their infants and factors impacting that partnership. We cultivated a conceptual model highlighting how parent-clinician partnerships can be a core element to promoting NICU patient safety.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

Parents' observations of clinician behavior affect their perceptions of safe care for their infants. Assessing what parents observe can be essential to building a partnership of trust between clinicians and parents and promoting safer care in the NICU.

IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH

Uncertainty remains about how to measure parent perceptions of safe care, the level at which the clinician-parent partnership affects patient safety, and whether parents' presence and involvement with their infants in the NICU improve patient safety.

Disclosing adverse events and near misses to parents of neonates

Critically ill newborns receiving intensive and complex care may be subject to medical errors and adverse events. Like most physicians, neonatologists do not feel comfortable disclosing their errors and may need assistance in learning how to do so. Understanding useful models of error disclosure, and communication training, will likely be beneficial.

Risk assessment of patient factors and medications for drug-related problems from a prospective longitudinal study of newborns admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit in Brazil

OBJECTIVE

To identify patient factors and medications associated with the occurrence of drug-related problems (DRPs) in neonates admitted to neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).

DESIGN

Prospective, longitudinal study.

SETTING

NICU of a teaching hospital in Brazil.

PARTICIPANTS

Data were collected from the records of the clinical pharmacy service of all neonates admitted between April 2014 and January 2017, excluding neonates with length of stay in the NICU <24 hours or without prescribed drugs.

PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES

Occurrence of one or more DRP (conditions interfering in the patient's pharmacotherapy with potential undesired clinical outcomes).

RESULTS

The study observed 600 neonates who had a median length of stay in the NICU of 13 days (range 2-278 days). DRPs were identified in most neonates (60.5%). In a multivariate logistic regression model, the factors independently associated with DRP were gestational age (adjusted OR (AOR) 0.85, 95% CI 0.81 to 0.89), 5 min Apgar <7 (AOR 1.74, 95% CI 1.00 to 3.13), neurological disease (AOR 2.49, 95% CI 1.09 to 5.69), renal disease (AOR 5.75, 95% CI 1.85 to 17.8) and cardiac disease (AOR 2.36, 95% CI 1.31 to 4.24). The medications with greater risk for DRP were amphotericin B (AOR 4.80), meropenem (AOR 4.09), alprostadil (AOR 3.38), vancomycin (AOR 3.34), ciprofloxacin (AOR 3.03), gentamicin (AOR 2.43), cefepime (AOR 1.88), amikacin (AOR 1.82) and omeprazole (AOR 1.66). These medicines represented one-third of all prescribed drugs.

CONCLUSIONS

Gestational age, 5 min Apgar <7, and neurological, cardiac and renal diseases are risk factors for DRP in NICUs. Alprostadil, omeprazole and several anti-infectives were associated with greater risk of DRP.

Impact of patient handover structure on neonatal perioperative safety

OBJECTIVE

To compare the incidence, severity, preventability, and contributing factors of non-routine events-deviations from optimal care based on the clinical situation-associated with team-based, nurse-to-nurse, and mixed handovers in a large cohort of surgical neonates.

STUDY DESIGN

A prospective observational study and one-time cross-sectional provider survey were conducted at one urban academic children's hospital. 130 non-cardiac surgical cases in 109 neonates who received pre- and post-operative NICU care.

RESULTS

The incidence of clinician-reported NREs was high (101/130 cases, 78%) but did not differ significantly across acuity-tailored neonatal handover practices. National Surgical Quality Improvement-Pediatric occurrences of major morbidity were significantly higher (p < 0.001) in direct team handovers than indirect nursing or mixed handovers.

CONCLUSIONS

NREs occur at a high rate and are of variable severity in neonatal perioperative care. NRE rates and contributory factors were homogenous across handover types. Surveyed clinicians recommend structured handovers for all patients at every transfer point regardless of acuity.

Natural Language Processing for EHR-Based Computational Phenotyping

This article reviews recent advances in applying natural language processing (NLP) to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for computational phenotyping. NLP-based computational phenotyping has numerous applications including diagnosis categorization, novel phenotype discovery, clinical trial screening, pharmacogenomics, drug-drug interaction (DDI), and adverse drug event (ADE) detection, as well as genome-wide and phenome-wide association studies. Significant progress has been made in algorithm development and resource construction for computational phenotyping. Among the surveyed methods, well-designed keyword search and rule-based systems often achieve good performance. However, the construction of keyword and rule lists requires significant manual effort, which is difficult to scale. Supervised machine learning models have been favored because they are capable of acquiring both classification patterns and structures from data. Recently, deep learning and unsupervised learning have received growing attention, with the former favored for its performance and the latter for its ability to find novel phenotypes. Integrating heterogeneous data sources have become increasingly important and have shown promise in improving model performance. Often, better performance is achieved by combining multiple modalities of information. Despite these many advances, challenges and opportunities remain for NLP-based computational phenotyping, including better model interpretability and generalizability, and proper characterization of feature relations in clinical narratives.

SEGURANÇA DA TERAPIA MEDICAMENTOSA EM NEONATOLOGIA: OLHAR DA ENFERMAGEM NA PERSPECTIVA DO PENSAMENTO ECOLÓGICO RESTAURATIVO

RESUMO Objetivo: analisar os fatores que interferem na segurança no processo de medicação em uma unidade de terapia intensiva (UTI) neonatal. Método: estudo exploratório com abordagem qualitativa. A coleta ocorreu no período de dezembro de 2014 a março de 2015, através de grupos focais e caminhada fotográfica, na perspectiva do pensamento ecológico restaurativo, com 12 profissionais de enfermagem da UTI neonatal de um hospital público da Região Sul do Brasil. As informações foram organizadas através do software Nvivo 10 e submetidas à análise de conteúdo temática. Resultados: a partir da análise, emergiram as seguintes categorias temáticas: Abordagem individualizada e cultura de punição dos erros de medicação; Fatores de (in)segurança relacionados à estrutura física dos medicamentos na UTI neonatal; Fatores de (in)segurança relacionados a rotinas e protocolos; e A enfermagem como barreira para a ocorrência de falhas de prescrição médica. Conclusão: o estudo demonstra a complexidade do processo de medicação em neonatologia e destaca pontos críticos no mesmo que podem ocasionar falhas e eventos adversos, assim como propostas de melhoria para prevenir os erros. Destaca-se o papel da equipe de enfermagem na detecção de erros da prescrição medicamentosa, funcionando como última barreira para prevenção e redução de erros associados à medicação.

Qualitative exploration of practices to prevent medication errors in neonatal intensive care units: a focus group study

Background

Medication errors (MEs) in neonates are frequent and associated with increased potential for harm compared with adults. The effect of learning from reported MEs is potentially lacking due to underreporting, lack of feedback and missing actions to improve medication safety. A new approach involving positive recognition of current and future strategies may facilitate greater exploration of how to improve medication safety in neonates. We aimed to explore current and potential future practices to prevent MEs in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).

Methods

Focus group interviews of physicians and nurses were conducted at three Danish NICUs. Participants were included if they had at least 1 month of working experience and provided direct patient care. A semistructured interview guide involving three questions was used: (a) how do you feel about discussing prevention of MEs? (b) how do you currently prevent MEs from occurring? and (c) how can we become better at preventing MEs in the future? Content analysis was used to identify themes in the interviews.

Results

Participants commented that MEs still occur and that action must be taken to improve medication safety. Current practices to prevent MEs involved technology, procedures, education, skills and hospital pharmacy services. Potential future practices to prevent MEs included customizing the computerized physician order entry systems to support optimal prescribing, standardizing the double-check process, training of calculation skills and teamwork and increased use of hospital pharmacy services.

Conclusions

Several current and potential future practices to reduce MEs in NICUs were identified, highlighting the complexity of MEs. Our findings support an interdisciplinary multifaceted intervention involving both technical and nontechnical elements to improve medication safety in NICUs.

Creating a comprehensive, unit-based approach to detecting and preventing harm in the neonatal intensive care unit

Background

Error detection and analysis alone cannot create or sustain a culture of safe, high-quality, compassionate care for patients. Some experts have endorsed a unit-based approach to improving quality, but there are few examples and those rarely focus on reducing all preventable harms and engaging frontline clinicians, patients, and families. Approach: We implemented a unit-based approach comprising seven building blocks for creating a comprehensive approach to detect and prevent harm at the unit level within a hospital: (1) unit quality council and stakeholder buy-in, (2) parent engagement and advisory council, (3) frontline clinician and parent quality improvement training, (4) measurement of organizational contextual factors, (5) electronic health record trigger development and synthesis of harm measures, (6) subcommittees to review harm, and (7) quality improvement teams. Challenges and Lessons Learned: Challenges include conceptualizing triggers for a unit unfamiliar with this methodology, establishing unit resources for collecting and analyzing data, and creating processes to integrate parents in unit quality efforts. The seven essential building blocks helped overcome these challenges and could be adopted by other healthcare organizations.

Conclusion

These building blocks create a generalizable foundation for establishing a unit-based approach to detecting and preventing harm.

Parents' Perspectives on Navigating the Work of Speaking Up in the NICU

OBJECTIVE

To describe parents' perspectives and likelihood of speaking up about safety concerns in the NICU and identify barriers and facilitators to parents speaking up.

DESIGN

Exploratory, qualitatively driven, mixed-methods design.

SETTING

A 50-bed U.S. academic medical center, open-bay NICU.

PARTICIPANTS

Forty-six parents completed questionnaires, 14 of whom were also interviewed.

METHODS

Questionnaires, interviews, and observations with parents of newborns in the NICU were used. The qualitative investigation was based on constructivist grounded theory. Quantitative measures included ratings and free-text responses about the likelihood of speaking up in response to a hypothetical scenario about lack of clinician hand hygiene. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were integrated in the final interpretation.

RESULTS

Most parents (75%) rated themselves likely or very likely to speak up in response to lack of hand hygiene; 25% of parents rated themselves unlikely to speak up in the same situation. Parents engaged in a complex process of Navigating the work of speaking up in the NICU that entailed learning the NICU, being deliberate about decisions to speak up, and at times choosing silence as a safety strategy. Decisions about how and when to speak up were influenced by multiple factors including knowing my baby, knowing the team, having a defined pathway to voice concerns, clinician approachability, clinician availability and friendliness, and clinician responsiveness.

CONCLUSION

To engage parents as full partners in safety, clinicians need to recognize the complex social and personal dimensions of the NICU experience that influence parents' willingness to speak up about their safety concerns.

Simulation to Standardize Patient Care and Maintain Procedural Competency

Simulation-based training is a means to teach procedural skills and to help advanced practice providers maintain procedural competency and credentialing. There is growing recognition of the importance of requiring providers to demonstrate competency of invasive procedures in a simulated environment prior to performing these high-risk procedures on patients. This article describes the development and implementation of the simulation procedural program at the University of Rochester Medical Center. In addition to contributing to the education of our providers, such a program can lead to improved patient quality, safety, and outcomes through the standardization of patient care. The innovative use of simulation can lead to effective heath care education and improvement in patient safety.

Medication safety in neonatal care: a review of medication errors among neonates

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to describe the medication errors in hospitalized patients, comparing those in neonates with medication errors across the age spectrum.

METHOD

In tier 1, PubMed, Embase and Google Scholar were searched, using selected MeSH terms relating to hospitalized paediatric, adult and elderly populations. Tier 2 involved a search of the same electronic databases for literature relating to hospitalized neonatal patients.

RESULTS

A total of 58 articles were reviewed. Medication errors were well documented in each patient group. Overall, prescribing and administration errors were most commonly identified across each population, and mostly related to errors in dosing. Errors due to patient misidentification and overdosing were particularly prevalent in neonates, with 47% of administration errors involving at least tenfold overdoses. Unique errors were identified in elderly patients, comprising duplication of therapy and unnecessary prescribing of medicines. Overall, the medicines most frequently identified with error across each patient group included: heparin, antibiotics, insulin, morphine and parenteral nutrition. While neonatal patients experience the same types of medication errors as other hospitalized patients, the medication-use process within this group is more complex and has greater consequences resulting from error. Suggested strategies to help overcome medication error most commonly involved the integration of a clinical pharmacist into the treating team.

CONCLUSION

This review highlights that each step of the medication-use process is prone to error across the age spectrum. Further research is required to develop targeted strategies relevant to specific patient groups that integrate key pharmacy services into wards.

Use of Temporary Names for Newborns and Associated Risks

BACKGROUND

Because there can be no delay in providing identification wristbands to newborns, some hospitals assign newborns temporary first names such as Babyboy or Babygirl. These nondistinct naming conventions result in a large number of patients with similar identifiers in NICUs. To determine the level of risk associated with nondistinct naming conventions, we performed an intervention study to evaluate if assigning distinct first names at birth would result in a reduction in wrong-patient errors.

METHODS

We conducted a 2-year before/after implementation study to examine the effect of a distinct naming convention that incorporates the mother's first name into the newborn's first name (eg, Wendysgirl) on the incidence of wrong-patient errors. We used the Retract-and-Reorder (RAR) tool, an established, automated tool for detecting the outcome of wrong-patient electronic orders. The RAR tool identifies orders placed on a patient that are retracted within 10 minutes and then placed by the same clinician on a different patient within the next 10 minutes.

RESULTS

The reduction in RAR events post- versus preintervention was 36.3%. After accounting for clusters of orders within order sessions, the odds ratio of an RAR event post- versus preintervention was 0.64 (95% confidence interval: 0.42-0.97).

CONCLUSIONS

The study results suggest that nondistinct naming conventions are associated with an increased risk of wrong-patient errors and that this risk can be mitigated by changing to a more distinct naming convention.

Prospective, controlled study of an intervention to reduce errors in neonatal antibiotic orders

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the effectiveness of an interactive computerized order set with decision support (ICOS-DS) in preventing medication errors in neonatal late-onset sepsis (LOS).

STUDY DESIGN

Prospective, controlled comparison of error rates in antibiotic orders for neonates admitted to the Medical University of South Carolina neonatal intensive care unit with suspected LOS (after postnatal day of life 3) prior to (n=153) and after (n=146) implementation of the ICOS-DS. Antibiotic orders were independently evaluated by two pharmacists for prescribing errors, potential errors and omissions. Prescribing errors included>10% overdoses or underdoses, inappropriate route, schedule or antibiotic, drug-drug or drug-disease interactions, and incorrect patient demographics. Potential errors included misspelled drugs, leading decimals, trailing zeroes, impractical doses and error-prone abbreviations. Multiple errors and omissions in an order were counted individually.

RESULTS

Overall error rate per order decreased from 1.7 to 0.8 (P<0.001) and potential error rate from 1.0 to 0.06 (P<0.001). The reduction in omission error rate per order from 0.2 to 0.1 was not significant (P=0.17). The prescribing error rate per order increased from 0.4 to 0.7 (P=0.03) because of the use of incorrect patient weights (P<0.001). Renal dysfunction was significantly associated with an increased risk of prescribing errors (odds ratio=3.7, P=0.01) which was not significantly different for handwritten versus ICOS-DS orders (P=0.15).

CONCLUSIONS

The ICOS-DS significantly improved the quality of neonatal LOS antibiotic orders although the use of incorrect patient weights was increased. In both groups, orders for patients with renal dysfunction were at risk for prescribing errors. Further evaluation of interventions to promote medication safety for this population is needed.

Surgical resident education in patient safety: where can we improve?

BACKGROUND

Effective communication and patient safety practices are paramount in health care. Surgical residents play an integral role in the perioperative team, yet their perceptions of patient safety remain unclear. We hypothesized that surgical residents perceive the perioperative environment as more unsafe than their faculty and operating room staff despite completing a required safety curriculum.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Surgeons, anesthesiologists, and perioperative nurses in a large academic children's hospital participated in multifaceted, physician-led workshops aimed at enhancing communication and safety culture over a 3-y period. All general surgery residents from the same academic center completed a hospital-based online safety curriculum only. All groups subsequently completed the psychometrically validated safety attitudes questionnaire to evaluate three domains: safety culture, teamwork, and speaking up. Results reflect the percent of respondents who slightly or strongly agreed. Chi-square analysis was performed.

RESULTS

Sixty-three of 84 perioperative personnel (75%) and 48 of 52 surgical residents (92%) completed the safety attitudes questionnaire. A higher percentage of perioperative personnel perceived a safer environment than the surgical residents in all three domains, which was significantly higher for safety culture (68% versus 46%, P = 0.03). When stratified into two groups, junior residents (postgraduate years 1-2) and senior residents (postgraduate years 3-5) had lower scores for all three domains, but the differences were not statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS

Surgical residents' perceptions of perioperative safety remain suboptimal. With an enhanced safety curriculum, perioperative staff demonstrated higher perceptions of safety compared with residents who participated in an online-only curriculum. Optimal surgical education on patient safety remains unknown but should require a dedicated, systematic approach.

Development of a consensus-base list of criteria for prescribing medication in a pediatric population

BACKGROUND

Although many people are involved in the optimal use of a medication within this process, the use of medications carries risks of adverse events, which are greater in the pediatric population because of many factors.

OBJECTIVE

In this context, our aim was to develop a consensus-based list of criteria for the safety of the pediatric medication-use process or circuit (referred to from now on as the CIRCUS tool: CIRcuit-of-Child-drug-USe).

SETTING

Multicenter with a trio of experts from eight university hospitals.

METHODS

A literature search (1998-2013) was conducted in order to identify the different safety practice domains for the pediatric medication use process. Twenty-six safety practice domains were identified and 48 compliance criteria were formulated. In order to reach a consensus on the most relevant compliance criteria for safety practices, an international 24 French-speaking multidisciplinary panelists (8 doctors, 8 pharmacists and 8 nurses) selected to represent a broad range of experience levels and specialties took part in a two round Delphi survey which was conducted between March and July 2013. Each panelist was asked to rate each proposed criterion on a 1-9 Likert scale in order to show their level of agreement (i.e. 1 reflects strong disagreement and 9 reflects strong agreement).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE

Development of a consensus-base list for safety practices in pediatrics.

RESULTS

Twenty-two of the 24 professionals invited to take part in this survey (92% participation rate) completed the two Delphi rounds. At the end of the two Delphi rounds, a total of 38/48 (79%) safety practice compliance criteria achieved consensus by the panelists. The criteria were grouped into 23 domains.

CONCLUSION

This study presents the development of a self-assessment tool for safety practices in the pediatric drug-use process using a Delphi method. This tool may be used in order to record and compare the prevalence of best safety practices in the pediatric drug-use process.

Gentamicin trough levels using a simplified extended-interval dosing regimen in preterm and term newborns

To evaluate a simplified gentamicin extended-interval dosing regimen in a large cohort of preterm and term newborns, we conducted a retrospective cohort study over a 4-year period. All inborn newborns who received gentamicin for the first episode of suspected or proven sepsis were eligible. Newborns received 4 mg/kg gentamicin intravenously 24-hourly, except for those at <28 weeks of gestation who received gentamicin 36-hourly. Trough levels were taken before the third dose and considered non-toxic if ≤2 μg/mL. Infants were analysed in gestational age subgroups: <28 weeks, 28-31 weeks, 32-35 weeks, 36-39 weeks and ≥40 weeks. Newborns who received indomethacin co-medication were analysed separately. Nine hundred ninety-three newborns, gestational age range 23(+2)-42(+1) weeks, birth weight range 397-5936 g, were included. The median (interquartile range (IQR)) gentamicin trough level for all newborns was 1.3 μg/mL (0.8-1.7). Ninety per cent of newborns had non-toxic trough levels. The incidence of trough levels >2 μg/mL was between 2.2 and 9.7 % in all subgroups except for infants born at 28-31 weeks of gestation, where 21.7 % of trough levels were >2 μg/mL. Indomethacin co-medication significantly increased the median gentamicin trough level in preterm infants at <32 weeks of gestation.

CONCLUSION

This study demonstrates that simplified gentamicin dosage regimens are feasible. Prospective evaluations are required to establish safety profiles.

Parents' perspectives on safety in neonatal intensive care: a mixed-methods study

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES

Little is known about how parents think about neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) safety. Due to their physiologic immaturity and small size, infants in NICUs are especially vulnerable to injury from their medical care. Campaigns are underway to integrate patients and family members into patient safety. This study aimed to describe how parents of infants in the NICU conceptualise patient safety and what kinds of concerns they have about safety.

METHODS

This mixed-methods study employed questionnaires, interviews and observation with parents of infant patients in an academic medical centre NICU. Measures included parent stress, family-centredness and types of safety concerns.

RESULTS

46 parents completed questionnaires and 14 of these parents also participated in 10 interviews (including 4 couple interviews). Infants had a range of medical and surgical problems, including prematurity, congenital diaphragmatic hernia and congenital cardiac disease. Parents were positive about their infants' care and had low levels of concern about the safety of procedures. Parents reporting more stress had more concerns. We identified three overlapping domains in parents' conceptualisations of safety in the NICU, including physical, developmental and emotional safety. Parents demonstrated sophisticated understanding of how environmental, treatment and personnel factors could potentially influence their infants' developmental and emotional health.

CONCLUSIONS

Parents have safety concerns that cannot be addressed solely by reducing errors in the NICU. Parent engagement strategies that respect parents as partners in safety and address how clinical treatment articulates with physical, developmental and emotional safety domains may result in safety improvements.

Barriers to Effective Preoperative Handover Communication in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

We sought to better understand the preoperative neonatal intensive care unit to operating room (NICU-to-OR) handover process and to elicit barriers to effective handovers. We first conducted observations of NICU-to-OR handovers to ascertain current handover practices, including the participants involved, handover content, as well as barriers and facilitators of effective handovers. We then developed a survey tool to assess the generalizability of our findings to other NICUs across the country. The resulting pilot data highlight key areas for future research and potential interventions to improve the quality of NICU-to-OR care transitions.

Research in perinatal and neonatal medicine--a scientific vision for future decades

In this article, a brief overview is presented concerning potential opportunities for and challenges in developing a neonatal-perinatal research agenda. Over a two year period, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, in the USA developed NICHD-Scientific Vision-The Next Decade. An outline of the Vision process and some of the recommendations originating from this are also described.

Phenotyping for patient safety: algorithm development for electronic health record based automated adverse event and medical error detection in neonatal intensive care

Background

Although electronic health records (EHRs) have the potential to provide a foundation for quality and safety algorithms, few studies have measured their impact on automated adverse event (AE) and medical error (ME) detection within the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) environment.

Objective

This paper presents two phenotyping AE and ME detection algorithms (ie, IV infiltrations, narcotic medication oversedation and dosing errors) and describes manual annotation of airway management and medication/fluid AEs from NICU EHRs.

Methods

From 753 NICU patient EHRs from 2011, we developed two automatic AE/ME detection algorithms, and manually annotated 11 classes of AEs in 3263 clinical notes. Performance of the automatic AE/ME detection algorithms was compared to trigger tool and voluntary incident reporting results. AEs in clinical notes were double annotated and consensus achieved under neonatologist supervision. Sensitivity, positive predictive value (PPV), and specificity are reported.

Results

Twelve severe IV infiltrates were detected. The algorithm identified one more infiltrate than the trigger tool and eight more than incident reporting. One narcotic oversedation was detected demonstrating 100% agreement with the trigger tool. Additionally, 17 narcotic medication MEs were detected, an increase of 16 cases over voluntary incident reporting.

Conclusions

Automated AE/ME detection algorithms provide higher sensitivity and PPV than currently used trigger tools or voluntary incident-reporting systems, including identification of potential dosing and frequency errors that current methods are unequipped to detect.

Medication errors in the neonate

Critically ill patients are a high risk population for medication errors and neonates represent a more vulnerable group. Errors can occur in each step of the path from prescription to administration and their rate varies widely due to the error definition and identification methods used in the different studies. Identifying medication errors is a challenge in neonatal care and should be a priority among care-givers in order to prevent future incidents and to improve patient safety.

Ontogeny and drug metabolism in newborns

In pediatric age and particularly in newborn infants the drug efficacy and safety are influenced by the growth and development on drug Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion (ADME). Thanks to the fast development of pharmacogenomics and pharmacogenetics, the drug therapy promises to be adapted to the genetic profile of the individual, reducing considerably the side effects of drugs and increasing their efficacy. Interindividual variability in drug response is well known in both adults and children. Such a variability is multifactorial considering both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Drug distribution in the neonate is influenced by a variety of age-dependent factors as a total body water content and distribution variations, role of drug transporters, blood/tissue protein binding, blood and tissue pH and perfusion. The development of enzymes involved in human metabolism were classified in 3 categories: 1) those expressed during the whole or part of the fetal period, but silenced or expressed at low levels within 1-2 years after birth; 2) those expressed at relatively constant levels throughout fetal development, but increased to some extent postnatally; and 3) those whose onset of expression can occur in the third trimester, but substantial increase is noted in the first 1-2 years after birth. Besides this intrinsic aspects influencing pharmacokinetics during the neonatal period there are other important events such as inborn or acquired diseases, environment and finally pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics. Thousands of deaths every years are caused by fatal drug reactions; among the potential causes there are not only the severity of the disease being treated, drug interactions, nutritional status, renal and liver functions, but also the inherited differences in drug metabolism and genetic polymorphism. Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) among pediatric patients have been shown to be three times more frequent than in adults. On August 2010 The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) addressed patient safety issues in the NICU, recognizing that to understand and prevent adverse events, systematic research and education in safety issues needed. From all these concepts in terms of ADME, pharmacogenetics (relative to a single gene) and pharmacogenomics (relative to many genes) it is becoming more evident the perspective of the new concept of individualized medicine. The goal of this should be to identify which group of patients responds positively, which patients are nonresponders and who experiences adverse reaction for the same drug and dose. The interindividual variability in response to any drug is mostly dependent on DNA sequence variations across the human genome, the haplotype map (HAPMAP). At present there is still a big distance beween the knowledge in genetic and the practical application to model the drug profile to the genetic/genomic profile of the single patient. In the neonatal period the effects of growth in the pharmacodynamic, processes can help optimizing the dosage of neonatal frequently used medicines, thereby, minimizing their toxicity and increasing their efficacy. It should be useful to create accurate dosage adjustments according to the week of development.

An algorithm to detect adverse drug reactions in the neonatal intensive care unit

Critically ill newborns in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) are at greater risk of developing adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Differentiation of ADRs from reactions associated with organ dysfunction/immaturity is difficult. Current ADR algorithm scoring was established arbitrarily without validation in infants. The study objective was to develop a valid and reliable algorithm to identify ADRs in the NICU. Algorithm development began with a 24-item questionnaire for data collection on 100 previously suspected ADRs. Five pediatric pharmacologists independently rated cases as definite, probable, possible, and unlikely ADRs. Consensus "gold standard" was reached via teleconference. Logistic regression and iterative C programs were used to derive the scoring system. For validation, 50 prospectively collected ADR cases were assessed by 3 clinicians using the new algorithm and the Naranjo algorithm. Weighted kappa and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were used to compare validity and reliability of algorithms. The new algorithm consists of 13 items. Kappa and ICC of the new algorithm were 0.76 and 0.62 versus 0.31 and 0.43 for the Naranjo algorithm. The new algorithm developed using actual patient data is more valid and reliable than the Naranjo algorithm for identifying ADRs in the NICU population. Because of the relatively small and nonrandom samples, further refinement and additional testing are needed.