-
Pharmacist involvement in medication reconciliation is so crucial to patient safety that one 450-plus-bed Wisconsin hospital invested considerable staff resources to make this a smooth process from admission through discharge.
-
Community hospitals can implement an effective and successful sepsis bundle program despite some initial obstacles, including obtaining buy-in from physicians, a Plano, TX, hospital has shown.
-
Adjusting drug dosage for patients with chronic kidney disease is a core function of clinical pharmacy practice, but deciding on best practices in doing so can be complicated.
-
One direct way to improve hospital medication safety is to have pharmacists involved in taking medication histories at admission and medication reconciliation from admission to discharge, one hospital has learned.
-
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that infection preventionists implement quality improvement (QI) programs or strategies to enhance appropriate use of indwelling catheters and to reduce the risk of CA-UTI based on a facility risk assessment.
-
When research suggests changes in standard medical practice, the public health community expects physicians and hospitals to adopt the new way and help improve patient outcomes.
-
Citing the elusiveness of "standardized and reliable measurement tools" for patient handoffs, a group of researchers has come up with a set of seven "framings," or interventions, they say can be used to improve them:
-
Not too long ago, Irwin Army Community Hospital, in Fort Riley, KS, had an obvious quality issue; more than 30% of its "board" results results used to determine if there are adequate medical reasons to "separate" a soldier from the military were being returned, which in many cases required a repeat of the process.
-
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has completed a massive update and revision of its 1981 guidelines to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CA-UTIs).
-
Several new studies highlight the need for more thorough discharge planning in the care of coronary and congestive heart failure patients.
