Quality or Patient Safety Concerns Regarding Catheterization Lab Patients

Quality or Patient Safety Concerns Regarding Cath Lab Patients
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Quality or Patient Safety Concerns Regarding Cath Lab Patients
The catheterization laboratory is a sophisticated operating environment where several highly skilled subspecialists led by a cardiologist interact with one another using complex medical equipment to care for patients with critical cardiac disorders and comorbidities. Even though thousands of patient lives are saved or significantly improved every year in the catheterization laboratory, unfortunate and potentially preventable adverse patient events continue to occur. Most of these complications are brought about by organizational factors such as complex patients, knowledge deficit, repetitive tasks, lack of systematic communication channels, and interruptions. They are also the result of human factors like policy violations, misjudgment, lapses, and miscommunications. In most cases, adverse patient outcomes in the catheterization laboratory result from multiple organizational and human factors co-occurring and heightening the possibility of medical errors.
Adverse patient events are not solely tied to organizational and human factors but also relate to the potentially hazardous nature of the complex interventions performed in the catheterization laboratory. The interventions, ranging from complex percutaneous valve implantations to routine coronary angiography, come with attendant risks and complications well documented in the existing literature. While time pressures and poor synchronization between multidisciplinary teams continue to be the leading causes of adverse patient events, the procedures themselves are responsible for a significant proportion of patient morbidity and mortality in the catheterization laboratory environment (Wahr et al., 2013). Moreover, there has been a lack of systematic attention to the reasons for suboptimal patient safety standards in the interventional cardiology setting. Consequently, efforts at identifying patient safety hazards and developing risk mitigation strategies in the catheterization laboratory have been slow. This essay will explain how EBP, research, and PI can be utilized to address the issue and how the proposed PI process will capture and disseminate data to improve quality improvement processes in the catheterization laboratory.
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a valuable tool in introducing and naturalizing current best evidence, clinical expertise, and patient values to guide patient safety initiatives. For instance, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) periodically releases Surveys on Patient Safety Culture (SOPS) Hospital Survey for clinicians and other hospital staff to evaluate and improve patient safety culture in their institutions. Another valuable EBP resource is the CathPCI Registry, which provides a wide array of reporting options to support progressive quality improvement in facilities. For instance, the CathPCI User Dashboard allows clinicians and hospital administrators to review their Institutional Outcomes Reports and Data Quality Reports by providing weekly data on quality metrics specific to the catheterization la...