You are attending a departmental event when you walk over to a group of your colleagues, and the conversation goes silent. You wonder if you had that effect on the conversation, but the awkward silence is reluctantly broken by the person who was speaking when they quietly continue their story. This veteran physician discusses a recent incident where they placed a wrong-sized lumen chest tube in a patient, only to have to replace …

You are working a busy shift in your local ED, which has a paper-based system for documentation and orders. You have seen two patients with the first name ‘Ben’, and two patients with the last name ‘Chen’. As you are reflecting on this, you realize that the last order you placed for one of the ‘Bens’ was placed on the wrong patient chart. You quickly grab the chart, put a line through the …

So far in our series we’ve explored several approaches, frameworks and tools that will help guide you through the process of quality improvement. You are probably eager to get started at this point (or you may have already!), but you may be wondering which areas to target first in your emergency department (ED). In a previous post we listed some high-yield priorities to choose from. Among these, one of the most recognized and accessible …