With monitors surveying every part of patients’ bodies, hospital intensive care units appear to be a model of high tech. But systems engineers say ICU’s are actually models of inefficiency because few of those high tech devices talk to each other. Experts discuss how ICU’s could be improved to save lives.
Guest Information:
- Dr. Peter Pronovost, Senior Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality, Johns Hopkins Medicine and Director, Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality
- Dr. Brian Pickering, intensive care anesthesiologist, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
I would agree that we all should have one computer system.
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So glad the glaring inefficiencies in ICU are being taken seriously. Anyone in patient care knows this is a systemic problem at all levels of healthcare: Home health, Surgery, Longterm Care, Hospital settings. Administration, patients, and patient families would never imagine that I’m not in patient rooms because I’m at the desk charting. Their answer to this isn’t less documentation, it’s new shiny computers hanging from the ceilings in patient rooms. At this point, 75% of a shift is used to make sure I’ve clicked all those boxes. Patient education, activities of daily living, time at the bedside, staff support and unit management take a back seat to documentation. Most lawsuits focus on what the nurse may have done but did not chart and with charting requirements going up this will not improve without innovation focused on reducing redundancy. Please keep us updated on the advances communicated in this segment.