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Showing results for tags 'Emergency medicine'.
Found 372 results
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Content ArticleThis cross-sectional survey in the British Journal of General Practice looks at the availability and use of emergency admission risk stratification (EARS) tools across the UK and aims to identify factors that influence their implementation. The authors identified 39 different EARS tools in use. They found that the most important factors in encouraging general practices to use EARS tools were: promotion by NHS commissioners involvement of clinical leaders engagement of practice managers. High workloads and information governance were significant barriers to their use. The authors highlight the need to align policy and practice with research evidence.
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Content Article
NHS Emergency Department Safer Nursing Care Tool
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Safe staffing levels
The Emergency Department Safer Nursing Care Tool is now available to use in NHS emergency departments in England. Developed by the Shelford Group chief nurses, licenced by Imperial College London and supported by the NHS England Chief Nursing Officer, the Emergency Department Safer Nursing Care Tool (ED SNCT) calculates nurse staffing requirements for emergency departments based on patients’ needs (acuity and dependency). Together with professional judgement, the tool supports emergency department managers and chief nurses in their safe staffing decisions. The Safer Nursing Care Tools (SNCT), including the Mental Health Optimal Staffing Tool (MHOST), are free to use by NHS trusts in England. -
Content ArticleFrequent external interruptions and lack of collaboration among team members are known to be common barriers in end-of-shift handoffs between physicians in the emergency department. In spite of being the primary location for this crucial and cognitively demanding task, workstations are not designed to limit barriers and support handoffs. The purpose of this study from Joshi et al. was to examine handoff characteristics, actual and perceived interruptions, and perceived collaboration among emergency physicians performing end-of-shift handoffs in physician workstations with varying levels of enclosures—(a) open-plan workstation, (b) enclosed workstation, and (c) semi-open workstation. The study showed positive outcomes experienced by physician working in the enclosed workstation as compared to the open and semi-open workstations.
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Content ArticlePeople with severe food allergies should carry two adrenaline autoinjector pens with them at all times, according to new guidance. Updated advice from The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says healthcare professionals should always offer people with severe allergies a prescription for two adrenaline auto-injectors (AAIs), which deliver potentially life-saving doses of the hormone to treat anaphylaxis, before being discharged from hospital after emergency treatment. They should also advise patients to always carry two devices with them, the guidance states.
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Content Article
Manchester Triage System (updated 24 February 2021)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Emergency medicine
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has raised a concern to NHS England and Improvement Patient Safety, following several reported incidents noting that organisations may not be using the latest version of The Manchester Triage System clinical risk management triage tool. Old versions of the system have outdated treatment/priority parameters for adult and paediatric sepsis that could affect patient outcome. The updated Manchester Triage System can be accessed from the link below. -
Content Article
Human factors for emergency response and critical care
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Techniques
In this blog post, Liv System’s Nigel Scard talks with Courtney Grant, a Senior Human Factors engineer with Transport for London (TfL). Nigel and Courtney worked together for a number of years at TfL on a number of station and line upgrade projects. A few years ago, Courtney applied his Human Factors and research skills with great tenacity, to a serious healthcare related incident which impacted him personally. This resulted in an important, lifesaving change to ambulance service procedures. In this interview, Courtney describes this in detail and also describes his recent work in supporting the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF) in supporting the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. -
Content ArticleIn this indicator update, Nuffield Trust look at trends in the quality of urgent and emergency care both before and during the pandemic. This includes measures of other parts of the health system which affect urgent care services.
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Content ArticleThis guide, developed by Parkinson's UK, tells you how to manage someone with Parkinson's in an emergency situation. It will be particularly useful for professionals who don’t see people with Parkinson's day-to-day.
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Content ArticleThis article, published in ICU Management and Practice, explores how human factors are significant contributors to drug error. To overcome some of these human factors, standardisation and consolidation is needed of agreed drugs and equipment into a compact pre-packed critical care drugs pouch (CCP) for use in non-theatre environments.
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Content ArticleDelays to timely admission from emergency departments (EDs) are known to harm patients. In this study, Jones et al. assessed and quantified the increased risk of death resulting from delays to inpatient admission from EDs, using Hospital Episode Statistics and Office of National Statistics data in England.
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Content ArticleThere has been a lot of discussion about whether the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter, if it is already overwhelmed, or if it is just having yet another “normal” winter crisis and will get through, as it always has, despite the additional pressures from omicron. The sight of the army being deployed in hospitals and ambulance services should be a clue that all is not well, but we are on a “war footing” after all. But can we be more precise about our current state?, writes Katherine Henderson, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, in this BMJ opinion piece. Is the healthcare system delivering the needed level of patient care? The problem of the elective backlog—known and unknown—is well documented. Individual patients have lost months, or even years of good health. They have anxiety, pain, and debilities that limit their ability to engage fully with their families and society. But how about the ability of the NHS to provide safe and effective emergency care to the most seriously ill, distressed, or injured—the emergency part of the urgent and emergency care pathway? What service should we be delivering, and how do we match up to those standards at the moment?
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Content ArticleSpotting and acting on the signs of deterioration in a patient or care home resident is vital to ensuring patient safety. The objective of the national Managing Deterioration Safety Improvement Programme (known as ManDetSIP) is to create and embed the conditions for staff across the healthcare system to improve the safety and outcomes of patients by managing deterioration, and provide a high quality healthcare experience across England.
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Content Article
We catch up with a regular contributor to the hub, theatre nurse Kathy Nabbie, to discuss how she is continuing to ensure patient's are kept safe in theatre, the challenges of COVID-19 and what else we can do to improve safety in the theatre. Kathy was a theatre sister for breast oncoplastic surgery and a practice development lead in a London private hospital group up until August 2017. She now works as a locum theatre bank scrub nurse practitioner and once a week as a non-medical surgical first assistant. She also works for an insourcing company on weekends around the country to help with the backlog of NHS patients who need surgery or treatment in clinics. -
Content ArticleFailure to rescue (FTR) denotes mortality from post-operative complications after surgery with curative intent. High-volume, low-mortality units have similar complication rates to others, but have lower FTR rates. Effective response to the deteriorating post-operative patient is therefore critical to reducing surgical mortality. Resilience Engineering might afford a useful perspective for studying how the management of deterioration usually succeeds and how resilience can be strengthened.
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Content ArticleThis article, published in BMC Health Services Research, discusses the effectiveness of using checklists as training and operational tools to assist in improving the skills of general ward staff on the rescue of patients with abnormal physiology.
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Event
SEIPS in emergency department
Sam posted an event in Community Calendar
untilThe Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) encourages investigations across the NHS to apply SEIPS. This 3 hour masterclass will focus upon using SEIPS in Emergency Departments. The SEIPS trainer Dr Dawn Benson has extensive experience of using and teaching SEIPS, as a Human Factors tool, in health and social care safety investigation. She will be joined in these masterclass sessions by clinical subject experts. Register -
Event
SEIPS masterclass in paramedic – Urgent & emergency care
Sam posted an event in Community Calendar
The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) encourages investigations across the NHS to apply SEIPS. This 3 hour masterclass will focus upon using SEIPS in paramedic – urgent & emergency care. The SEIPS trainer Dr Dawn Benson has extensive experience of using and teaching SEIPS, as a Human Factors tool, in health and social care safety investigation. She will be joined in this masterclass session by a clinical subject expert. Morning session: 9.30-12.30 Afternoon session: 1.30-4.30 Register -
Event
SEIPS masterclass in emergency departments
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
untilThe Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) encourages investigations across the NHS to apply SEIPS. This 2.5 hour masterclass will focus upon using SEIPS in Emergency Departments. SEIPS trainer Dr Dawn Benson has extensive experience of using and teaching SEIPS, as a Human Factors tool, in health and social care safety investigation. She will be joined in these masterclass sessions by clinical subject experts. The masterclass will be limited to a small group to ensure in-depth learning. Priced at £50 per person. Pre and post class materials will be provided. Register -
Event
The Trauma of Trauma
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
Treating trauma can be traumatic. The UK now has over 30 major trauma centres which treat more than 40,000 patients with traumatic injuries each year. For people under the age of 40, trauma remains a leading cause of death, and trauma survivors often experience life-changing injury and long-term disability. This study day examines the impact of various traumatic injuries on patients and the teams who care for them. Exploring burns, orthopaedic and battlefield trauma, as well as how to manage mass casualty events, you’ll learn about a wide range of trauma care scenarios. The speakers will outline how battlefield experience can be adapted for frontline work in within the NHS, with a key focus on the mental, physical and practical skills required to manage trauma to achieve the best outcomes for both patient and practitioner. The goal is to provide you with theory and practical skills to help you manage the mental and physical aspects of trauma in different settings. The sessions will also support you with understanding how skills learnt in one area can be transferred to another. Topics include: Treatment of acute burn injuries. The role of the Orthopaedic Trauma Coordinator. Introduction to AO Trauma Principles. Mass Casualty Events and the Citizen Aid App – with practical demo. Trauma and resilience in the armed forces: A Captain’s perspective. Trauma management on the battlefield. Register -
Content ArticleDelays in the handover of patient care from ambulance crews to emergency departments (EDs) are causing harm to patients. A patient’s health may deteriorate while they are waiting to be seen by ED staff, or they may be harmed because they are not able to access timely and appropriate treatment. This national investigation sought to examine the systems that are in place to manage the flow of patients through and out of hospitals and consider the interactions between the health and social care systems (the ‘whole system’). This report brings together the findings from the investigation’s three interim reports and provides an update since they were published. You can view the interim reports on the hub: Interim report 1 (16 June 2022) Interim report 2 (3 November 2022) Interim report 3 (27 February 2023)
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Community PostWe are looking into introducing a new device to deliver CPAP at ward level into our trust. Currently we use NIPPY machines which can deliver some PEEP when in a selected mode, however the downfall to this is, it can only produce an oxygen concentration of around 50%. Often, the patient groups that require this intervention are on high oxygen requirements and so particularly in the early stages would benefit from a device that could deliver both. I have previously worked with Pulmodyne 02-Max trio which allows up to 90% oxygen and PEEP up to 7.5cmH20. Majority of patients responded very well to this treatment. I wondered whether any other trusts/ team have any other experiences/ devices that they may use and recommend? @Danielle Haupt@Claire Cox@Emma Richardson@Mandy Odell@PatientSafetyLearning Team@Patient Safety Learning@Patient safety Hub@CCOT_Southend
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Content ArticleA casually centred proposal identifying how Fire and Rescue Services can improve pre-hospital care and quality of life outcomes for burn survivors. David Wales and Kristina Stiles have released this report looking at the burn survivor experience in the pre-hospital environment. The work makes ten operational recommendations and also two 'lessons learned' recommendations exploring strategic partnership working and the resulting fragmented services.
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Content ArticleNHS urgent and emergency care is under intolerable strain. This strain is increasingly causing harm to patients. Timely and high quality patient care is often not being delivered due to overcrowding driven by workforce and capacity constraints. While the covid-19 pandemic has accentuated and arguably expedited the crisis; the spiral of decline in urgent and emergency care has been decades long and unless urgent action is taken, we may not yet have reached its nadir, writes Tim Cooksley and colleagues in this BMJ opinion article.
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Content Article
The King's Fund: Activity in the NHS (19 June 2023)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Data and insight
Over the past 10 years, it has often been stated that the NHS treats more than a million people every 36 hours, but is that still true? Here, the King's Fund analyse NHS activity (eg, calls, appointments, attendances and admissions) and explore some of the underlying trends that lie behind these headline statistics. Following the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, NHS activity has almost returned to pre-pandemic levels. -
Content ArticlePatients are vulnerable during emergency episodes outside the formal care sector, for example, care provided by paramedics responding to a stroke or heart attack at home. Yet much less is known about the safety of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) as compared with primary or secondary healthcare. This relative lack of information is important given there are aspects of EMS care that create unique patient safety challenges. This BMJ Editorial discusses how we can improve patient safety in the Emergency Medical Services.
