The emergency cardiac arrest response team (eCART): a novel strategy for improving therapeutic hypothermia utilization following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

BACKGROUND: Out-of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is associated with significant mortality. Therapeutic hypothermia is one of the few interventions that have been shown to increase post-arrest survival as well as enhance neurologic recovery. Despite clinical guidelines recommending the use of therapeutic hypothermia (TH) following cardiac arrest, utilization rates by physicians remain low. We hypothesized that the development of a multi-disciplinary emergency cardiac arrest response team (eCART) would enhance therapeutic hypothermia utilization in the emergency department for OHCA. METHODS AND RESULTS: An eCART (emergency department cardiac arrest response team) was created at a single site academic urban emergency department. The eCART team consisted of a physician hypothermia consultant, a cardiologist, a clinical pharmacist, a respiratory therapist and a chaplain. These providers were notified by page prior to the arrival of an OHCA patient and responded to the ED in person or by phone to support the resuscitation. Analysis of pre- and post-intervention data demonstrated a significant increase in the rate of TH utilization (64% to 96%). There was a non-significant decrease in the time to target temperature. CONCLUSIONS: The creation of a coordinated, multi-disciplinary care team, providing real-time support for OHCA patients increased TH utilization in an emergency department.

Tablet-based cardiac arrest documentation: a pilot study.

AIM: Conventional paper-based resuscitation transcripts are notoriously inaccurate, often lacking the precision that is necessary for recording a fast-paced resuscitation. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether a tablet computer-based application could improve upon conventional practices for resuscitation documentation. METHODS: Nurses used either the conventional paper code sheet or a tablet application during simulated resuscitation events. Recorded events were compared to a gold standard record generated from video recordings of the simulations and a CPR-sensing defibrillator/monitor. Events compared included defibrillations, medication deliveries, and other interventions. RESULTS: During the study period, 199 unique interventions were observed in the gold standard record. Of these, 102 occurred during simulations recorded by the tablet application, 78 by the paper code sheet, and 19 during scenarios captured simultaneously by both documentation methods These occurred over 18 simulated resuscitation scenarios, in which 9 nurses participated. The tablet application had a mean sensitivity of 88.0% for all interventions, compared to 67.9% for the paper code sheet (P=0.001). The median time discrepancy was 3s for the tablet, and 77s for the paper code sheet when compared to the gold standard (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Similar to prior studies, we found that conventional paper-based documentation practices are inaccurate, often misreporting intervention delivery times or missing their delivery entirely. However, our study also demonstrated that a tablet-based documentation method may represent a means to substantially improve resuscitation documentation quality, which could have implications for resuscitation quality improvement and research.