Performance of Early Warning Scoring Systems Regarding Adverse Events of Unanticipated Clinical Deterioration in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Hospitals.

PURPOSE: This study aims to examine the performance of early warning scoring systems regarding adverse events of unanticipated clinical deterioration in complementary and alternative medicine hospitals. METHODS: A medical record review of 500 patients from 5-year patient data in two traditional Korean medicine hospitals was conducted. Unanticipated clinical deterioration events included unexpected in-hospital mortality, cardiac arrest, and unplanned transfers to acute-care conventional medicine hospitals. Scores of the Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS), National Early Warning Score (NEWS), and National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2) were calculated. Their performance was evaluated by calculating areas under the receiver-operating characteristic curve for the event occurrence. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the factors associated with event occurrence. RESULTS: The incidence of unanticipated clinical deterioration events was 1.1% (225/21101). The area under the curve of MEWS, NEWS, and NEWS2 was .68, .72, and .72 at 24 hours before the events, respectively. NEWS and NEWS2, with almost the same performance, were superior to MEWS (p = .009). After adjusting for other variables, patients at low-medium risk (OR = 3.28; 95% CI = 1.02-10.55) and those at medium and high risk (OR = 25.03; 95% CI = 2.78-225.46) on NEWS2 scores were more likely to experience unanticipated clinical deterioration than those at low risk. Other factors associated with the event occurrence included frailty risk scores, clinical worry scores, primary medical diagnosis, prescribed medicine administration, acupuncture treatment, and clinical department. CONCLUSIONS: The three early warning scores demonstrated moderate-to-fair performance for clinical deterioration events. NEWS2 can be used for early identification of patients at high risk of deterioration in complementary and alternative medicine hospitals. Additionally, patient, care, and system factors need to be considered to improve patient safety.

Adverse Events in Korean Traditional Medicine Hospitals: A Retrospective Medical Record Review.

OBJECTIVES: Traditional medicine has been used worldwide in recent decades. The aim of this study was to determine the incidence of adverse events (AEs) in traditional medicine hospitals and investigate patient and health-care utilization factors associated with AE occurrence. METHODS: A 2-stage review of 1152 randomly sampled charts in 2 teaching Korean traditional medicine hospitals was conducted. Three physicians and a quality improvement specialist identified AE occurrence, severity, and preventability using the Global Trigger Tool (Appendix 1, Supplemental Digital Content, http://links.lww.com/JPS/A19). Two traditional Korean medicine professors validated the findings. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine factors associated with AE occurrence. RESULTS: One hundred twenty-two admissions (10.6%) had at least one AE (7.39 events per 1000 patient days and 14.5 events per 100 admissions). Among 167 AEs, 73.7% were mild and 70.7% were judged preventable. Procedure-related AEs were most common. After considering other patient and health-care utilization characteristics, factors associated with AE occurrence were altered mental status on admission (OR, 3.86; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.20-12.44), use of various traditional medicine therapies (OR, 1.69; 95% CI, 1.32-2.15), length of stay (OR, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01-1.03), and number of unique triggers (OR, 6.35; 95% CI, 4.54-8.89). CONCLUSIONS: Approximately 11% of inpatients in traditional medicine hospitals experienced AEs. Because patients have a higher risk of AEs, special attention should be paid to those with altered mental status on admission, receiving various traditional medicine therapies, staying for a longer period, and having various positive triggers.

Patient safety competence for final-year health professional students: Perceptions of effectiveness of an interprofessional education course.

As final-year medical and nursing students will soon play key roles in frontline patient care, their preparedness for safe, reliable care provision is of special importance. We assessed patient safety competencies of final-year health profession students, and the effect of a 1-day patient safety education programme on these competencies. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 233 students in three colleges of medicine, nursing, and traditional medicine in Seoul. A before-and-after study followed to evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum. Patient safety competency was measured using the Health-Professional Education for Patients Safety Survey (H-PEPSS) and an objective patient safety knowledge test. The mean scores were 3.4 and 1.7 out of 5.0, respectively. The communication domain was rated the highest and the teamwork domain was rated the lowest. H-PEPSS scores significantly differed between the students from three colleges. The 1-day patient safety education curriculum significantly improved H-PEPSS and knowledge test scores. These results indicated that strengthening patient safety competencies, especially teamwork, of students is required in undergraduate healthcare curricula. A 1-day interprofessional patient safety education programme may be a promising strategy. The findings suggest that interprofessional patient safety education needs to be implemented as a core undergraduate course to improve students' safety competence.

Venous Thromboembolism Following Hip and Knee Replacement Arthroplasty in Korea: A Nationwide Study Based on Claims Registry.

The aim of this study was to examine the incidence and trends of clinically relevant venous thromboembolism (VTE) including deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) after hip and knee replacement arthroplasty (HKRA) in Korea. Between January 1 and December 31, 2010, 22,127 hip replacement arthroplasty (HRA) patients and 52,882 knee replacement arthroplasty (KRA) patients were enrolled in the analysis using the administrative claims database of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA). All available parameters including procedure history and clinically relevant VTE during the 90 days after HKRA were identified based on diagnostic and electronic data interchange (EDI) codes. The overall incidence of VTE, DVT, and PE during the 90 days was 3.9% (n=853), 2.7% (n=597), and 1.5% (n=327) after HRA, while the incidence was 3.8% (n=1,990), 3.2% (n=1,699), and 0.7% (n=355) after KRA. The incidence of VTE after HKRA was significantly higher in patients who had previous VTE history (odds ratio [OR], 10.8 after HRA, OR, 8.5 after KRA), chronic heart failure (2.1, 1.3), arrhythmia (1.8, 1.7), and atrial fibrillation (3.4, 2.1) than in patients who did not. The VTE incidence in patients with chemoprophylaxis was higher than that in patients without chemoprophylaxis. The incidence of VTEs revealed in this retrospective review was not low compared with the results of the studies targeting other Asian or Caucasian populations. It may warrant routine prevention including employment of chemoprophylaxis. However, the limitation of the reviewed data mandates large scale prospective investigation to affirm this observation.

Inappropriate hospitalization days in Korean oriental medicine hospitals.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the extent of inappropriate hospitalization days in Korean oriental medicine (OM) hospitals and to determine the factors associated with inappropriate stays. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study design using concurrent and retrospective medical record reviews. SETTING: Two teaching OM hospitals in Korea. PARTICIPANTS: Patients (n = 256) consecutively discharged from general care units in two OM hospitals in 1 month. INTERVENTION: The appropriateness of each hospitalization day was assessed using a modified appropriateness evaluation protocol. Patient and healthcare use characteristics were also reviewed. Multiple regression analyses were performed to determine factors associated with inappropriate stay. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Rate of inappropriate hospitalization days. RESULTS: Overall, 14.9% (691/4644) of hospitalization days reviewed were judged inappropriate with a mean of 18.3% (95% confidence interval = 14.6-22.0) per patient. Approximately half of patients (n = 126, 49.2%) had at least 1 inappropriate hospitalization day. Factors associated with inappropriate hospitalization days were admission method and number of types of OM therapies. Patients admitted to hospitals on foot without assistance had more inappropriate hospitalization days than those admitted by stretcher cart. Those who underwent several types of OM therapies during hospitalization had fewer inappropriate hospitalization days. CONCLUSIONS: A substantial proportion of hospitalization days were evaluated as inappropriate. Patient condition at admission and types of OM therapies required should be taken into account to reduce unnecessary stays in OM hospitals. Additionally, availability of OM services, especially for patients with limited motor functions, needs to be improved outside hospitals.

Exploring the usability of the ISO reference terminology model for nursing actions in representing oriental nursing actions.

PURPOSE: This study examined the extent to which the ISO reference terminology model for nursing actions represents oriental nursing actions in a computerized nursing documentation system to share data and foster communication between oriental nursing care and conventional nursing care. METHODS: The narrative nursing notes of 545 patients retrieved from a nursing documentation system in an oriental medicine teaching hospital were analyzed. Among 49,118 entries, 933 were recorded as nursing actions. Each entry was decomposed in a set of single statements. A total of 1209 nursing action statements were derived and mapped to the components of the model. These processes were reviewed and validated by two domain experts and a nursing terminology expert. RESULTS: All of the oriental nursing actions documented contained a word or phrase that described the Action and Target in the model. The Recipient of Care was expressed explicitly in 1.2% of statements. The most frequently used Action terms were 'administering' (19.7%), 'teaching' (16.5%), and 'explaining' (13.6%). The Target terms that indicated unique oriental nursing concepts included 'Sasang constitution differentiation', 'removal of acupuncture needles', 'herb moxibustion', 'oriental massage', and 'oriental medication'. CONCLUSION: The findings demonstrate that oriental nursing actions can be represented using the ISO reference terminology model for nursing actions. Further specification of the components of the model will be useful to achieve consistent mapping across different settings. The addition of component qualifiers should also be taken into consideration to describe nursing actions at a more granular level.