You are a resident coming in to see a patient who has come into the ED complaining of a new, sudden-onset, 9/10 pain headache. You run a CT scan and rule out any hemorrhage or stroke, referring them to the Stroke Prevention Clinic for a consultation. The patient asks if they can receive a virtual appointment for the future, as they live quite far away and would much prefer it. You wonder if …
HiQuiPs: Building Quality & Safety Infrastructure
You’ve completed a Quality Improvement (QI) project and you’re thinking about how you might align your efforts with those of your colleagues to build a community of practice that can prioritize, support, and deliver a comprehensive program of high-quality Q&S work. But where to start? What are the crucial steps and antecedents for success in building a robust Quality & Safety (Q&S) infrastructure? Welcome to this HiQuiPs post that offers a roadmap on …
Human-Centered Design in Healthcare
You are working a busy shift in the emergency department and are trying to quickly disposition patients. As the shift progresses and your feet hurt, you wonder why your work space is far removed from the patient care area, and different walls have bins that contain order sets, handover notes, and referral forms. Moreover, the route to sending the tube to the lab crosses too close to the dirty utility room. You think …
HiQuiPs: Quality Improvement Projects and Patient Reported Measures
You are about to start a Quality Improvement (QI) project in your ED. You have noted that clinicians are being interrupted frequently by patient questions about the ED process and non patient care related inquiries. You have read previously that emergency physicians were being interrupted an average of 9.7 times per hour and may result in a break in tasks, which may lead to negative patient safety implications.1–3 You have set up a …
HiQuiPs: Year in Review
It has already been one year since we launched the HiQuiPs (Health informatics, Quality Improvement, Patient Safety) series on CanadiEM. This year we had fifteen contributors from across the country, and over 15,000 page visits to our series. Over the past year, we have produced thirteen posts over the HiQuiPs interrelated fields: Quality Improvement: On QI, we introduced what is quality of care in the ED, then to guide our readers through the …
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 …