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Standardising the organisation of clinical equipment on surgical wards at North Bristol NHS Trust: a quality improvement initiative.

ABSTRACT: Poorly organised clinical equipment can waste significant amounts of time otherwise available for direct patient care. As a group of foundation year one doctors, we identified the organisation of clinical equipment across surgical wards at North Bristol NHS Trust to be poor with stocks often low and items frequently difficult to locate. Time-motion studies (n=80) were confirmatory demonstrating that the mean time to collect equipment necessary for venepuncture, cannulation, arterial blood gases, or blood cultures ranged from 121 to 174 seconds between different areas. By applying a plan-do-study-act (PDSA) methodology, surveying peers as well as working with nursing staff and senior managers, we were able to purchase and implement clinical equipment trolleys on 10 surgical wards across the trust to reduce the time-taken to locate clinical equipment to between 38 to 45 seconds (p=0.01). We feel the key factors for the success of our initiative were strong multidisciplinary engagement and a simple uniform idea. Clinical equipment trolleys organised in a standardised manner have now been rolled out hospital-wide in the new Southmead Hospital Brunel building.

SUBMITTER: Ward J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4645941 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Standardising the organisation of clinical equipment on surgical wards at North Bristol NHS Trust: a quality improvement initiative.

Ward Joseph J Spencer Robin R Soo Eleanor E Finucane Katherine K

BMJ quality improvement reports 20150515 1

Poorly organised clinical equipment can waste significant amounts of time otherwise available for direct patient care. As a group of foundation year one doctors, we identified the organisation of clinical equipment across surgical wards at North Bristol NHS Trust to be poor with stocks often low and items frequently difficult to locate. Time-motion studies (n=80) were confirmatory demonstrating that the mean time to collect equipment necessary for venepuncture, cannulation, arterial blood gases, ...[more]

PMID: 26734373

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Project description:Medicines reconciliation is integral to patient safety, symptom control and reducing patient anxiety. During a 3-month period on the respiratory ward at St. Peter's Hospital, 54% of drug charts were not reconciled with pre-admission medicines at the point of discharge for admissions up to 17 days. Only 18% were reconciled within 24 hours of admission. 50% of drug charts were missing 0-2 pre-admission medicines and 50% were missing 3-5 pre-admission medicines. The most common medicines that were not reconciled included topical applications which included eye, ear, nasal and skin applications (14%); vitamins i.e. vitamin B12 and thiamine, analgesia, PRN inhalers (11% individually); antidepressants and lipid regulators (6% individually); amongst a range of other medications including antiplatelets, calcium channel blockers, ACE inhibitors and diuretics. Two interventions were carried out to improve the rate of medicines reconciliation onto hospital drug charts with pre-admission medicines. These were: 1) a green sticker placed in the medical notes by the pharmacist when drug charts were incomplete, which required a date and signature from the doctor when the drug chart had been reconciled 2) the placing of the loose medicines reconciliation record (a list of pre-admission medicines retrieved from a reliable source usually by the pharmacist) to the front of the drug chart. These measures were designed to alert the doctors that the drug chart was incomplete. After 2 PDSA cycles, the results showed positive outcomes. In 75% of the cases where the interventions were used, medicines reconciliation was complete at the point of discharge with 34% of drug charts reconciled within 24 hours of admission. Of the 25% of drug charts that were not reconciled despite the use of the interventions, 100% of them were missing 0-2 medicines however 0% were missing 3-5 medicines. This highlights that the interventions were effective in improving the rates of medicines reconciliation.

Dataset Information

Standardising the organisation of clinical equipment on surgical wards at North Bristol NHS Trust: a quality improvement initiative.

Publications

Standardising the organisation of clinical equipment on surgical wards at North Bristol NHS Trust: a quality improvement initiative.

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