Use of a Novel, Electronic Health Record-Centered, Interprofessional ICU Rounding Simulation to Understand Latent Safety Issues.

OBJECTIVES: The electronic health record is a primary source of information for all professional groups participating in ICU rounds. We previously demonstrated that, individually, all professional groups involved in rounds have significant blind spots in recognition of patient safety issues in the electronic health record. However, it is unclear how team dynamics impacts identification and verbalization of viewed data. Therefore, we created an ICU rounding simulation to assess how the interprofessional team recognized and reported data and its impact on decision-making. DESIGN: Each member of the ICU team reviewed a simulated ICU chart in the electronic health record which contained embedded patient safety issues. The team conducted simulated rounds according to the ICU's existing rounding script and was assessed for recognition of safety issues. SETTING: Academic medical center. SUBJECTS: ICU residents, nurses, and pharmacists. INTERVENTION: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Twenty-eight teams recognized 68.6% of safety issues with only 50% teams having the primary diagnosis in their differential. Individually, interns, nurses, and pharmacists recognized 30.4%, 15.6%, and 19.6% of safety items, respectively. However, there was a negative correlation between the intern's performance and the nurse's or the pharmacist's performance within a given team. The wide variance in recognition of data resulted in wide variance in orders. Overall, there were 21.8 orders requested and 21.6 orders placed per case resulting in 3.6 order entry inconsistencies/case. Between the two cases, there were 145 distinct orders place with 43% being unique to a specific team and only 2% placed by all teams. CONCLUSIONS: Although significant blind spots exist in the interprofessional team's ability to recognize safety issues in the electronic health record, the inclusion of other professional groups does serve as a partial safety net to improve recognition. Electronic health record-based, ICU rounding simulations can serve as a test-bed for innovations in ICU rounding structure and data collection.

Professional and interprofessional differences in electronic health records use and recognition of safety issues in critically ill patients.

During interprofessional intensive care unit (ICU) rounds each member of the interprofessional team is responsible for gathering and interpreting information from the electronic health records (EHR) to facilitate effective team decision-making. This study was conducted to determine how each professional group reviews EHR data in preparation for rounds and their ability to identify patient safety issues. Twenty-five physicians, 29 nurses, and 20 pharmacists participated. Individual participants were given verbal and written sign-out and then asked to review a simulated record in our institution's EHR, which contained 14 patient safety items. After reviewing the chart, subjects presented the patient and the number of safety items recognised was recorded. About 40%, 30%, and 26% of safety issues were recognised by physicians, nurses, and pharmacists, respectively (p = 0.0006) and no item recognised 100% of the time. There was little overlap between the three groups with only 50% of items predicted to be recognised 100% of the time by the team. Differential recognition was associated with marked differences in EHR use, with only 3/152 EHR screens utilised by all three groups and the majority of screens used exclusively only by one group. There were significant and non-overlapping differences in individual profession recognition of patient safety issues in the EHR. Preferential identification of safety issues by certain professional groups may be attributed to differences in EHR use. Future studies will be needed to determine if shared decision-making during rounds can improve recognition of safety issues.