Adaptation of a Simulation Model and Checklist to Assess Pediatric Emergency Care Performance by Prehospital Teams.

INTRODUCTION: Simulation tools to assess prehospital team performance and identify patient safety events are lacking. We adapted a simulation model and checklist tool of individual paramedic performance to assess prehospital team performance and tested interrater reliability. METHODS: We used a modified Delphi process to adapt 3 simulation cases (cardiopulmonary arrest, seizure, asthma) and checklist to add remote physician direction, target infants, and evaluate teams of 2 paramedics and 1 physician. Team performance was assessed with a checklist of steps scored as complete/incomplete by raters using direct observation or video review. The composite performance score was the percentage of completed steps. Interrater percent agreement was compared with the original tool. The tool was modified, and raters trained in iterative rounds until composite performance scoring agreement was 0.80 or greater (scale <0.20 = poor; 0.21-0.39 = fair, 0.40-0.59 = moderate; 0.60-0.79 = good; 0.80-1.00 = very good). RESULTS: We achieved very good interrater agreement for scoring composite performance in 2 rounds using 6 prehospital teams and 4 raters. The original 175 step tool was modified to 171 steps. Interrater percent agreement for the final modified tool approximated the original tool for the composite checklist (0.80 vs. 0.85), cardiopulmonary arrest (0.82 vs. 0.86), and asthma cases (0.80 vs. 0.77) but was lower for the seizure case (0.76 vs. 0.91). Most checklist items (137/171, 80%) had good-very good agreement. Among 34 items with fair-moderate agreement, 15 (44%) related to patient assessment, 9 (26%) equipment use, 6 (18%) medication delivery, and 4 (12%) cardiopulmonary resuscitation quality. CONCLUSIONS: The modified checklist has very good agreement for assessing composite prehospital team performance and can be used to test effects of patient safety interventions.

Communication between nurse care managers and patients who take opioids for chronic pain: Strategies for exploring aberrant behavior.

OBJECTIVE: One approach to potential misuse of prescription opioids by patients with chronic pain is team-based collaborative primary care, with primary care visits complemented by frequent visits with nurse care managers (NCMs) specializing in addiction care. However, little is known about the communication strategies NCMs employ in these visits. This study aimed to describe strategies NCMs used with patients when discussing aberrancies encountered during opioid monitoring. DESIGN: Observational study of NCM-patient interactions. Patients' primary care providers had been randomized to the treatment arm of a study evaluating an intervention, of which NCM visits were part, to change opioid prescribing patterns. The overall intervention was found to be successful. SETTING: Four primary care settings. PARTICIPANTS: Two NCMs and 41 patients. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Forty one interactions between two NCMs and 41 unique patients were directly observed, and the detailed field notes coded for strategies using conventional content analysis. RESULTS: Five themes describing strategies that NCMs use to navigate aberrant patient behavior emerged: (1) NCM develops therapeutic relationship with patient; (2) NCM encourages adherence to monitoring strategies by contextualizing intensive opioid management for patient; (3) NCM inquires into discrepancies between patient's narrative and objective data to further understand aberrancy; (4) NCM assesses patient's medication use and pain to obtain more information about aberrancy and determine risk for opioid misuse; and (5) NCM educates patient and makes recommendations to guide appropriate medication use. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide a potential model for the replication of intensive care management strategies utilizing NCMs in primary care.