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Showing results for tags 'Anaesthesia'.
Found 146 results
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Content ArticleThe safe management of a patient’s airway is one of the most challenging and complex tasks undertaken by a health professional - complications can result in devastating outcomes. How can anaesthetists improve safety, prevent complications, and be prepared to manage difficulties when they arise? How, in a crisis, can we ensure that human and technical resources are best utilised? This free course from Future Learn, endorsed by the Difficult Airway Society, will provide answers to these key questions and help you develop strategies to improve patient safety in your area of practice, discussing safe airway management in patient groups and multidisciplinary clinical settings.
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Content ArticleThis study, published by the International Institute of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, evaluates the safety and efficacy of flushing the cervical canal and the uterine cavity with local anaesthetic in order to reduce the pain felt by patients during office hysteroscopy.
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Airway Device Evaluation Project Team (ADEPT)
Claire Cox posted an article in Keeping patients safe
The aim of the Airway Device Evaluation Project Team (ADEPT) is to establish a process by which the airway-management community within the profession could lead a process of formal device/equipment evaluation. There is increasing number of airway management devices being introduced into clinical practice with little or no evidence of their clinical efficacy or safety. While there are several national and international regulations governing which products can come on to the market and be legitimately sold, there has hitherto been no formal professional guidance relating to how products should be selected (purchased). ADEPT has formulated such advice, emphasising evidence based principles and defined a minimum level of evidence needed to make a pragmatic decision about the purchase or selection of an airway device. ADEPT advises that this definition should form the basis of a professional standard, guiding those with responsibility for selecting airway devices. This paper, published by Anaesthesia journal, describes how widespread adoption of this professional standard can act as a driver to create an infrastructure in which the required evidence can be obtained. -
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Patient education and information: difficult airway
Claire Cox posted an article in Keeping patients safe
The Difficult Airway Society (DAS) is a UK based medical specialist society formed to enhance and promote safe airway management of patients by anaesthetists and other healthcare practitioners. DAS is actively involved in training healthcare professionals in the safe and competent practice of advanced airway management. DAS has produced guidelines for airway management of patient undergoing anaesthetic. These guidelines are highly valued and widely followed not only in the UK but also worldwide. With nearly 3000 members (most of whom are anaesthetists based in UK and worldwide ) DAS is also the largest specialist society in the UK. The links below lead you to patient information leaflets produced by DAS about how anaesthetist manage your airway (breathing passage) during an anaesthetic. -
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Airway alert card and difficult airway database
Claire Cox posted an article in Process improvement
The Difficult Airway Society (DAS) has produced a difficult airway card for patients to carry in their wallet. This is to alert the anaesthetist that this patient has a 'difficult airway' before they find out the hard way. This website also holds the database for patients with difficult airways. This is for clinicians to use to help assess risk in patients undergoing sedation or general anaesthetic. -
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The SPA experience: NHS Wales Award winner 2016
Claire Cox posted an article in Learning disabilities
Having surgery can be a daunting experience for most people. Staff at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend, Wales, have recognised this, especially in their patients with complex needs. The reasonable adjustments that they have put in place to ensure their patients receive a bespoke, calming, safe experience won them an NHS Wales Award in 2016 in the Citizens at the Centre of Service Redesign and Delivery category.- Posted
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Content ArticleThe Safe Anaesthesia Liaison Group (SALG) Patient Safety Updates contain important learning from incidents reported to the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS). The RCoA and the AAGBI would like to bring these Safety Updates to the attention of as many anaesthetists and their teams as possible. The updates are published quarterly and contain data from an earlier three month period. To join the safety network, and receive patient safety updates direct to your inbox, please contact the SALG administrator at admin@salg.ac.uk .
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Content ArticleThe Cappuccini Test is a simple six-question audit designed to pick up issues relating to supervision of anaesthetists in training and non-autonomous SAS grades (NASG) who do not fit the description in Guidelines for the Provision of Anaesthesia Services (GPAS) of 'SAS anaesthetists that local governance arrangements have agreed in advance are able to work in those circumstances without consultant supervision.' The test is named after Frances Cappuccini, who died giving birth to her son at Tunbridge Wells Hospital in 2012. The coroner’s inquest into her death noted that supervision arrangements for anaesthetists at the trust were ‘undefined and inadequate’. The test was developed for hospitals to assess the level of supervision given to their SAS and trainee anaesthetists, and to make improvements with the aim of improving the safety of patients.
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Capnography: No Trace = Wrong Place
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Patient management
The Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) and the Difficult Airway Society (DAS) have collaborated to create the video resource Capnography: No Trace = Wrong Place. Presented by Professor Tim Cook, the video shares the important message that during cardiac arrest, if a capnography trace is completely flat, oesophogeal intubation should be assumed until proven otherwise. -
Content ArticleThis article from Peden et al. reviews of some of the key topics and challenges in quality, safety, and the measurement and improvement of outcomes in anaesthesia. Topics covered include medication safety, changes in approaches to patient safety, payment reform, longer term measurement of outcomes, large-scale improvement programmes, the ageing population, and burnout. The article begins with a section on the success of the specialty of anaesthesia in improving the quality, safety, and outcomes for our patients, and ends with a look to future developments, including greater use of technology and patient engagement.
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Content ArticleThe International Standards for a Safe Practice of Anesthesia (ISSPA) were developed on behalf of the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists and the World Health Organization. It has been recommend as an assessment tool that allows anaesthetic providers in developing countries to assess their compliance and needs. This study from Tao et al. was performed to describe the anaesthesia service in one main public hospital during an 8-month medical mission in Cambodia and evaluate its anaesthetic safety issues according to the ISSPA.
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Content ArticleThe pursuit of patient safety involves reducing the gap between best practice and the care actually delivered to patients. Understanding how to reliably deliver best practice care using established anaesthetic techniques may, today, be more important than seeking new ones. Advances in anaesthesia safety involve analysing failures and devising strategies to address these. However, anaesthetists do not work in isolation, and their contribution to the function of the multidisciplinary teams in which they work has far-reaching consequences for patient care.
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Content ArticleInadequate access to anaesthesia and surgical services is often considered to be a problem of low- and middle-income countries. However, affluent nations, including Canada, Australia, and the United States, also face shortages of anesthesia and surgical care in rural and remote communities. Inadequate services often disproportionately affect indigenous populations. A lack of anaesthesia care providers has been identified as a major contributing factor to the shortfall of surgical and obstetrical care in rural and remote areas of these countries. In this report, Orser et al. summarises the challenges facing the provision of anaesthesia services in rural and remote regions
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Content ArticleAccording to the National Institutes of Health (January 2019), more than 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids every day. Among these deaths are patients in the hospital setting, recovering from surgical procedures or undergoing sedation, who are often prescribed opioids such as morphine and oxycodone to manage pain – a necessity for healthy and comfortable recovery. But at certain doses, these drugs can also cause respiratory failure, and, because each patient is different, there is no one dose that is 'right' or 'wrong'. Hospitals must take action to ensure their staff are aware of these risks, and put protocols in place to prevent patient deaths. The authors of this US article, published by Medium, offer recommendations for improving patient safety in this area.
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Content ArticleDr J.S. Gravenstein, a much-respected leader of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation, shares here some of his remarkably incisive current thoughts about and insight on anesthesia safety in our evolving practice environment.
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Content ArticleRob Hackett, Patient Safe Network, in the video below discusses the danger of Indistinct chlorhexidine which can easily be mistaken for other colourless solutions. He highlights the story of Grace Wang, who in 2010 had antiseptic solution injected into her epidural. She nearly died and was left paralysed. Indistinct chlorhexidine was mistaken for saline. The investigation recommended all skin antiseptic solutions to be coloured in a way that distinguished them. Sadly this recommendation isn't followed. Accidental chlorhexidine injections continue to occur and there are many more examples. This same error continues to play out again and again throughout the world. There’s no need for these indistinct solutions and safer distinct versions and those enclosed in swab sticks are already in use in many hospitals without problem and at no extra cost.
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Content ArticleIn intensive care units (ICU) and operating theatres, arterial lines are used to accurately measure a patient’s blood pressure and take numerous and repetitive blood samples. In order to prevent bacterial contamination and blood spillage from the arterial line, red arterial connectors, which are closed cap coverings, are placed on the sampling port of the arterial line. Doctors from The Queen Elizabeth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Kings Lynn have collaborated with Eastern Academic Health Science Network and the Patient Safety Collaborative on this patient safety solution.
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Content ArticleIt is important for the whole of the multidisciplinary team to have guidelines and standards, and that is the reason for the collaborative Core Standards for Pain Management Services in the UK (CSPMS UK). Representatives of the Faculty of Pain Medicine, the British Pain Society, the Royal College of Nurses, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the College of Occupational Therapists, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Psychological Society and patient representatives have jointly been the authors of this document.
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Content ArticleThis directive alert has been issued on the need to confirm intravenous (IV) lines and cannulae have been effectively flushed or removed at the end of the procedure.
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Content ArticleThe safety of anesthesia characteristic of high-income countries today is not matched in low-resource settings with poor infrastructure, shortages of anesthesia providers, essential drugs, equipment, and supplies. Health care is delivered through complex systems. Achieving sustainable widespread improvement globally will require an understanding of how to influence such systems. Health outcomes depend not only on a country's income, but also on how resources are allocated, and both vary substantially, between and within countries. Safety is particularly important in anesthesia because anesthesia is intrinsically hazardous and not intrinsically therapeutic. Nevertheless, other elements of the quality of health care, notably access, must also be considered. Surgical and anesthesia services must not only be provided, they must be safe. The global anesthesia workforce crisis is a major barrier to achieving this. Many anesthetics today are administered by nonphysicians with limited training and little access to supervision or support, often working in very challenging circumstances. Many organisations, notably the World Health Organization and the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists, are working to improve access to and safety of anesthesia and surgery around the world. Challenges include collaboration with local stakeholders, coordination of effort between agencies, and the need to influence national health policy makers to achieve sustainable improvement. It is conceivable that safe anesthesia and perioperative care could be provided for essential surgical services today by clinicians with moderate levels of training using relatively simple (but appropriately designed and maintained) equipment and a limited number of inexpensive generic medications. However, there is a minimum standard for these resources, below which reasonable safety cannot be assured. This minimum (at least) should be available to all. Not only more resources, but also more equitable distribution of existing resources is required. Thus, the starting point for global access to safe anesthesia is acceptance that access to health care in general should be a basic human right everywhere.
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Content ArticleAnesthesia is necessary for surgery; however, it does not deliver any direct therapeutic benefit. The risks of anesthesia must therefore be as low as possible. Anesthesiology has been identified as a leader in improving patient safety. Anesthetic mortality has decreased, and in healthy patients can be as low as 1:250,000. Trends in anesthetic morbidity have not been as well defined, but it appears that the risk of injury is decreasing. Studies of error during anesthesia and Closed Claims studies have identified sources of risk and methods to reduce the risks associated with anesthesia. These include changes in technology, such as anesthetic delivery systems and monitors, the application of human factors, the use of simulation, and the establishment of reporting systems. Richard Botney reviews the important events in the past 50 years that illustrates the many steps that have contributed to the improvements in anesthesia safety.
