Background: Team Strategies to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS ™) is an evidence‐based system aimed at creating a culture of safety in any healthcare delivery system. Developed by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the basis of the program is to improve communication and teamwork skills […]

Background: Episodes of patient deterioration on hospital units are expected to increasingly contribute to morbidity and healthcare costs. This randomized, controlled study was designed to evaluate whether an automated clinical deterioration alert sent to the nurse member of an acute care team (ACT) could affect the rate of ICU transfer, hospital mortality, and hospital length […]

Background: Interventions to reduce inappropriate urinary catheter use are implemented using lists of appropriate and inappropriate criteria (e.g., CDC’s 2009 catheter‐associated urinary tract infection guideline), informed by limited evidence without substantial multidisciplinary input. Implementation is challenging due to broad interpretations of indications (e.g., “critical illness”) and common catheter uses not addressed in lists (e.g., patient […]

Background: Peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) play a key role in providing venous access for medication and fluids, laboratory testing, and hemodynamic monitoring. Despite standardization of insertion practices, little is known about nursing knowledge and practice related to maintaining and caring for PICCs in hospitalized patients. We set out to explore bedside registered nurse (RN) […]

Background: Medical errors are common and interventions to address vulnerabilities may fail due to a weak organizational safety culture. To transform hospitals and develop a culture of safety and high reliability, an assessment of the perceptions of healthcare professionals to promote organizational learning needs to be done. Though hospitalists and nurses may have different attitudes […]

Background: No studies in Japan have described the perceived strength of evidence supporting practices to prevent common healthcare‐associated infections and the actual use of these practices. In the current study, we conducted a nationwide survey of infection prevention personnel to assess perception of the evidence for various preventive practices and the regular use of these […]

Background: Medication reconciliation is crucial for patient safety. Patients are often uncertain of the medications they are taking and physicians may not have time to take thorough medication histories. A pharmacy technician (PT), by conducting structured patient interviews and calling outpatient pharmacies, would be a new means by which to obtain important information on patients’ […]

Background: Pediatric Hospital Medicine (PHM) has grown rapidly over the last 15 years. There is little information about the characteristics of the PHM workforce. Our objective was to describe the PHM workforce and note implications for the future. Methods: The AAP is conducting workforce surveys of its member sections to identify trends and issues. Over […]

Background: Circumcision is the most common neonatal surgical procedure in the world. There is regional variation in circumcision providers which includes obstetricians, pediatricians, family practitioners and non‐medical personnel. Pediatric hospitalists (PH) in many hospitals provide care to newborns in the nursery and are available to provide circumcision. There is no data regarding the safety and […]

Background: Over the past two decades, pediatric hospitalist programs have become a common part of inpatient care in many health care markets. However, many primary care pediatricians may still include inpatient care in their practices. We sought to determine trends in provision of hospital care by pediatricians practicing in ambulatory settings. Methods: We used the […]