Your emergency department (ED) recently switched over to an electronic health system (EHR). While you slowly adjust your clinical workflow, you find all the dictating, clicking and typing cumbersome and “slows you down”. You wonder how this innovative technology seemingly has become the foremost barrier to your clinical care and how this technology could ever improve patient care? These frustrations and concerns are common sentiments as many EDs across the country are switching …
HiQuiPs: Introduction to Biomedical and Health Informatics and its Role in the Emergency Department
You are attending your departmental monthly team meeting where you are all discussing your emergency department’s (ED) plan to switch to an electronic healthcare record (EHR) system in the coming months. There is also a lot of discussion about utilizing more health informatics tools to improve patient care. The presenter discusses the emerging role of health informatics in the ED, as well as the utility of connecting to regional health information exchanges. You …
HiQuiPs: Patient Safety in the ED Part 3 – The Role of Safety Culture in a Patient Safety Program
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 …
HiQuiPs: Patient Safety in the ED Part 2 – Key Concepts in the Systems-Based Patient Safety Paradigm
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 …
HiQuiPs: Patient Safety in the ED Part 1 – Introduction to the Systems Approach
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 …