Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Training through Simulation Using the Crisis Resource Management Tool for Primary Care Professionals.

This was a prospective observational study based on clinical simulation courses taught in 2017 at the IDEhA Simulation Center of Alcorcón Foundation University Hospital. Two courses in metabolic emergencies (MEs) and respiratory emergencies (REs) were offered to primary care physicians all over Spain. The main objective was to teach nontechnical skills (crisis resource management). Using a modified five-level Kirkpatrick-Phillips education evaluation model, level I (reaction, K1), level II (learning, K2) and level III (behavioral change, K3) changes were evaluated through surveys at the end of the courses and one year later. Thirty courses were held (15 ME courses and 15 RE courses) with 283 primary care physicians. The overall satisfaction (K1) was high: ME courses, 9.5/10; RE courses, 9.6/10. More than 80% of the participants rated the organization, resources, content, debriefing and scenarios as excellent, with no significant differences between the two courses. After one year (156 responses), the respondents for both courses reported that they would repeat the training annually (K2), encourage debriefing with colleagues (K3) and have modified some aspects of their workplace (K3), citing improvements in procedures and in the organization of the health team as the most important. After the ME course, few participants, i.e., 5 (6%), reported providing improved care to patients; after the RE course, 15 (19%) participants reported providing improved care; the difference between groups was significant (p < 0.05). Compared with the ME course, the RE course imparted greater knowledge about patient safety (K2) (38 (49%) vs. 24 (31%) (p < 0.05)) and more useful tools for daily clinical practice (K3) (67% vs. 56.4%) and resulted in participants paying more attention to personal performance and to colleagues when working as a team (K2) (64% vs. 50%). Clinical simulation courses are highly valued and potentially effective for training primary care physicians in patient safety and CRM tools. Future studies with objective measures of long-term impact, behavior in the workplace (K3) and benefits to patients (K4) are needed. Based on the results of our study, the areas that are important are those aimed at improving procedures and the organization of health teams.

The three ages balance for patient safety.

The evolution of the patient safety perspectives, the technological age, the human factor age and the safety management age, have no clear cut and coexist. The current edition of the Current Opinion in Anesthesiology Technology, Education and Safety section presents an eclectic compendium of articles addressing these views from the technological improvements, human factor developments and organizational safety management impacting patient safety. Every solution, every patch to fill the cheese hole, holding the domino piece to fall, opens a new disruption elsewhere that needs to be addressed following the zero-preventable harm path.

Can we nudge to reduce the perioperative low value care? Decision making factors influencing safe practice implementation.

PURPOSE OF THE REVIEW: Highlight sources of low-value care (LVC) during the perioperative period help understanding the decision making behind its persistence, the barriers for change, and the potential implementation strategies to reduce it. RECENT FINDINGS: The behavioural economics science spread of use through aligned strategies or nudge units offer an opportunity to improve success in the LVC reduction. SUMMARY: LVC, such as unneeded surgeries, or preanaesthesia tests for low-risk surgeries in low-risk patients, is a relevant source of waste and preventable harm, most especially in the perioperative period. Despite the international focus on it, initial efforts to reduce it in the last decade have not clearly shown a sustainable improvement. Understanding the shared decision-making process and the barriers to be expected when tackling LVC is the first step to build the change. Applying a structured strategy based on the behavioural science principles may be the path to increasing high value care in an effective an efficient way. It is time to foster nudge units at different healthcare system levels.

Learning from errors and resilience.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Learning from errors has been the main objective of patient safety initiatives for the last decades. The different tools have played a role in the evolution of the safety culture to a nonpunitive system-centered one. The model has shown its limits, and resilience and learning from success have been advocated as the key strategies to deal with healthcare complexity. We intend to review the recent experiences in applying these to learn about patient safety. RECENT FINDINGS: Since the publication of the theoretical basis for resilient healthcare and Safety-II, there is a growing experience applying these concepts into reporting systems, safety huddles, and simulation training, as well as applying tools to detect discrepancies between the intended work as imagined when designing the procedures and the work as done when front-line healthcare providers face the real-life conditions. SUMMARY: As part of the evolution in patient safety science, learning from errors has its function to open the mindset for the next step: implementing learning strategies beyond the error. The tools for it are ready to be adopted.

Extension of patient safety initiatives to perioperative care.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Patient safety has significantly improved during the intraoperative period thanks to the anesthesiologists, surgeons, and nurses. Nowadays, it is within the perioperative period where most of the preventable harm happened to the surgical patient. We aim to highlight the main issues and efforts to improve perioperative patient safety focusing and the relation to intraoperative safety strategies. RECENT FINDINGS: There is ongoing research on perioperative safety strategies aiming to initiate multidisciplinary interventions on early stages of the perioperative period as well as an increasing focus on preventing harm from postoperative complications. SUMMARY: Any patient safety strategy to be implemented needs to be framed beyond the operating room and include in the intervention the whole perioperative period.

Update on early warning scores.

Early warning scores (EWS) have the objective to provide a preventive approach for detecting those patients in general wards at risk of deterioration before it begins. Well implemented and combined with a tiered response, the EWS expect to be a relevant tool for patient safety. Most of the evidence for their use has been published for the general EWS. Their strengths, such as objectivity and systematic response, health provider training, universal applicability and automatization potential need to be highlighted to counterbalance the weakness and limitations that have also been described. The near future will probably increase availability of EWS, reliability and predictive value through the spread and acceptability of continuous monitoring in general ward, its integration in decision support algorithms with automatic alerts and the elaboration of temporal vital signs patterns that will finally allow to perform a personal modelling depending on individual patient characteristics.

Anaesthesia and perioperative incident reporting systems: Opportunities and challenges.

Incident Reporting Systems (IRS) continue to be an important influence on improving patient safety. IRS can provide valuable insights into how to prevent patients from being harmed at the organizational level. But inadequate expectations and misuse, for performance assessment, patient safety measurement or research, have hindered the full IRS potential. Health care organizations need to develop effective strategies built on trust and truth telling to improve the impact of IRS. This requires strategies to address the limited resources to analyse the near-misses or adverse events; avoid the punitive drift through maintaining the anonymity and protective legislation; integrating IRS and avoiding its confusion with mandatory adverse event response systems; training data analysts to focus on the system instead of the individual through a balanced simple taxonomy; combine the analyses at the local level, to reinforce effective and personalized feedback, with the potential of a national or supranational learning platform.

Patterns in medication incidents: A 10-yr experience of a cross-national anaesthesia incident reporting system.

BACKGROUND: Medication-related adverse events (MRE) in anaesthesia care are frequent and require a deeper understanding if we are to prevent medication harm. METHODS: We searched for reported MRE from the Spanish Anaesthesia Incident Reporting System (SENSAR) database over a 10-yr period. SENSAR is a cross-national, multicentre system focused on perioperative and critical care. A descriptive analysis of independent variables, phase of medication process, type of MRE, and medication group involved, and their relationships with morbidity was conducted. RESULTS: A total of 1970 MRE were identified from 7072 reported incidents. Patient harm was reported in 31% of the MRE. The administration phase was more frequent (42%) and showed the highest harm rate (44%) compared with other medication process phases. The most frequent types of MRE were wrong treatment regimen and wrong medication (55% of cases). The medication groups most commonly reported were those that alter haemostasis (18%), vasoconstrictor agents (13%), and opioids (10%). Vasoconstrictor agents, benzodiazepines, and neuromuscular blocking agents were the medication groups involved in patient harm four-fold more, and opioids three-fold more, than medications that alter haemostasis. The 1970 incidents were investigated and led to implementation of 4223 local corrective patient safety and quality improvement measures. CONCLUSIONS: Patient harm in the perioperative setting from medications remains a major issue for patients, hospital leaders, and clinicians. We found patterns and specific causes that can be mitigated through proven systems solutions, and should be taken into consideration in designing sustainable solutions for safe perioperative care. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT03615898.