BACKGROUNDA rapid response system (RRS) consists of providers who immediately assess and treat unstable hospitalized patients. Examples include medical emergency teams and rapid response teams. Early reports of major improvements in patient outcomes led to widespread utilization of RRSs, despite the negative results of a subsequent cluster‐randomized trial.PURPOSETo evaluate the effects of RRSs on clinical outcomes through a systematic literature review.DATA SOURCESMEDLINE, BIOSIS, and CINAHL searches through August 2006, review of conference proceedings and article bibliographies.STUDY SELECTIONRandomized and nonrandomized controlled trials, interrupted time series, and before‐after studies reporting effects of an RRS on inpatient mortality, cardiopulmonary arrests, or unscheduled ICU admissions.DATA EXTRACTIONTwo authors independently determined study eligibility, abstracted data, and classified study quality.DATA SYNTHESISThirteen studies met inclusion criteria: 1 cluster‐randomized controlled trial (RCT), 1 interrupted time series, and 11 before‐after studies. The RCT showed no effects on any clinical outcome. Before‐after studies showed reductions in inpatient mortality (RR = 0.82, 95% CI: 0.74‐0.91) and cardiac arrest (RR = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.65‐0.83). However, these studies were of poor methodological quality, and control hospitals in the RCT reported reductions in mortality and cardiac arrest rates comparable to those in the before‐after studies.CONCLUSIONSPublished studies of RRSs have not found consistent improvement in clinical outcomes and have been of poor methodological quality. The positive results of before‐after trials likely reflects secular trends and biased outcome ascertainment, as the improved outcomes they reported were of similar magnitude to those of the control group in the RCT. The effectiveness of the RRS concept remains unproven. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2007;2:422–432. © 2007 Society of Hospital Medicine.

This curriculum demonstrated success in increasing perceived skills for interprofessional palliative care clinicians in advanced communication, team practice, and metrics and system integration.

Context: Providing nonbeneficial care at the end of life and delays in initiating comfort care have been associated with provider and nurse moral distress. Objective: Evaluate provider and nurse moral distress when using a comfort care order set and attitudes about timing of initiating comfort care for hospitalized patients. Methods: Cross-sectional survey of providers (physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants) and nurses at 2 large academic hospitals in 2015. Providers and nurses were surveyed about their experiences providing comfort care in an inpatient setting. Results: Two hundred five nurse and 124 provider surveys were analyzed. A greater proportion of nurses compared to providers reported experiencing moral distress “some, most, or all of the time” when using the comfort care order set (40.5% and 19.4%, respectively, P = .002). Over 60% of nurses and providers reported comfort care was generally started too late in a patient’s course, with physician trainees (81.4%), as well as providers (80.9%) and nurses (84.0%) < 5 years from graduating professional school most likely to report that comfort care is generally started too late. Conclusions: The majority of providers and nurses reported that comfort care was started too late in a patient’s course. Nurses experienced higher levels of moral distress than providers when caring for patients using a comfort care order set. Further research is needed to determine what is driving this moral distress in order to tailor interventions for nurses and providers.

We successfully developed a new comfort care order set at our institutions that can serve as a resource for others. Further evaluation of this order set is needed.