After The Joint Commission released its National Patient Safety Goal concerning handoff communication in 2005, staff at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (Children’s) spent plenty of time and effort convincing staff that the issue was an important one. As a result, the hospital standardized its...
If a procedure has been shifted from the physician to the nurse, can informed consent then be obtained by the nurse, or does that responsibility remain with the ordering physician? One facility, by using nurses for the insertion of peripherally inserted central catheters (PICC lines), challenged...
A new report released by The Leapfrog Group shows that computer physician order entry (CPOE) systems can potentially miss half of routine medication orders and one-third of potentially fatal medication orders.
The report is based on a study of 214 hospitals that tested their CPOE...
I was always certain that my career in patient safety would be in the delivery sector, in health systems, hospitals, or clinics—settings in which clinicians and patients interact. Based on time spent as a frontline staff member and later as a leader in patient safety, I was sure that this was...
The Joint Commission seeks feedback on revisions to the 2010 version of Universal Protocol (Hospital, Critical Access Hospital, Ambulatory Care, and Office-based Surgery programs).
True or false: Informed consent includes information on the risks and hazards of a particular treatment, the alternatives or options available to the patient, the risks and hazards of the alternatives or options, and any other information that will help the patient make a well-informed decision...
Q. We are in the process of moving to an electronic system. How have other hospitals managed co-signatures on high-risk medications when nurses are scanning meds and patient IDs at the bedside? We would like to make it as easy as possible for the nurses.