A collaborative approach to design and implementation of interprofessional team training can lead to a sustainable program that serves both patient safety and training requirements set forth by professional organizations.
Central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) cause major patient harm, preventable through attention to line care best practice standards. The objective was to determine if a digital self-assessment application (CLABSI App), bundling line care best practices with social gamification and in-context microlearning, could engage nurses in CLABSI prevention. Nurses caring for children with indwelling central venous catheters in 3 high-risk units were eligible to participate. All other units served as controls. The intervention was a 12-month nonrandomized quality improvement study of CLABSI App implementation with interunit competitions. Compared to the preceding year, the intervention group (9886 line days) CLABSI rate decreased by 48% ( P = .03). Controls (7879 line days) did not change significantly. In all, 105 unique intervention group nurses completed 673 self-assessments. Competitions were associated with increased engagement as measured by self-assessments and unique participants. This model could be extended to other health care-associated infections, and more broadly to process improvement within and across health care systems.
Pediatricians and other child care providers manage a large number of children with constipation, a recurrent medical problem that is frustrating to patients, their care givers, and the health care providers themselves. Most often the constipation in children is functional in nature, and only a very small percentage of patients have an organic cause for it. In this review, we discuss the epidemiology, causes, evaluation, and management of children with functional constipation. [Pediatr Ann. 2016;45(5):e189-e196.].
Children with implanted ports had similar complication rates and care safety measures whether their ports were flushed with 10 units/ml of heparin or 100 units/ml. Standardizing flush-locks to lower doses of heparin may be a promising approach to maintaining port patency without compromising patient safety.
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