Geographic access to high capability severe acute respiratory failure centers in the United States

Objective: Optimal care of adults with severe acute respiratory failure requires specific resources and expertise. We sought to measure geographic access to these centers in the United States. Design: Cross-sectional analysis of geographic access to high capability severe acute respiratory failure centers in the United States. We defined high capability centers using two criteria: (1) provision of adult extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), based on either 2008-2013 Extracorporeal Life Support Organization reporting or provision of ECMO to 2010 Medicare beneficiaries; or (2) high annual hospital mechanical ventilation volume, based 2010 Medicare claims. Setting: Nonfederal acute care hospitals in the United States. Measurements and Main Results: We defined geographic access as the percentage of the state, region and national population with either direct or hospital-transferred access within one or two hours by air or ground transport. Of 4,822 acute care hospitals, 148 hospitals met our ECMO criteria and 447 hospitals met our mechanical ventilation criteria. Geographic access varied substantially across states and regions in the United States, depending on center criteria. Without interhospital transfer, an estimated 58.5% of the national adult population had geographic access to hospitals performing ECMO and 79.0% had geographic access to hospitals performing a high annual volume of mechanical ventilation. With interhospital transfer and under ideal circumstances, an estimated 96.4% of the national adult population had geographic access to hospitals performing ECMO and 98.6% had geographic access to hospitals performing a high annual volume of mechanical ventilation. However, this degree of geographic access required substantial interhospital transfer of patients, including up to two hours by air. Conclusions: Geographic access to high capability severe acute respiratory failure centers varies widely across states and regions in the United States. Adequate referral center access in the case of disasters and pandemics will depend highly on local and regional care coordination across political boundaries. © 2014 Wallace et al

Assessing the validity of using serious game technology to analyze physician decision making

Background: Physician non-compliance with clinical practice guidelines remains a critical barrier to high quality care. Serious games (using gaming technology for serious purposes) have emerged as a method of studying physician decision making. However, little is known about their validity. Methods: We created a serious game and evaluated its construct validity. We used the decision context of trauma triage in the Emergency Department of non-trauma centers, given widely accepted guidelines that recommend the transfer of severely injured patients to trauma centers. We designed cases with the premise that the representativeness heuristic influences triage (i.e. physicians make transfer decisions based on archetypes of severely injured patients rather than guidelines). We randomized a convenience sample of emergency medicine physicians to a control or cognitive load arm, and compared performance (disposition decisions, number of orders entered, time spent per case). We hypothesized that cognitive load would increase the use of heuristics, increasing the transfer of representative cases and decreasing the transfer of non-representative cases. Findings: We recruited 209 physicians, of whom 168 (79%) began and 142 (68%) completed the task. Physicians transferred 31% of severely injured patients during the game, consistent with rates of transfer for severely injured patients in practice. They entered the same average number of orders in both arms (control (C): 10.9 [SD 4.8] vs. cognitive load (CL):10.7 [SD 5.6], p = 0.74), despite spending less time per case in the control arm (C: 9.7 [SD 7.1] vs. CL: 11.7 [SD 6.7] minutes, p<0.01). Physicians were equally likely to transfer representative cases in the two arms (C: 45% vs. CL: 34%, p = 0.20), but were more likely to transfer non-representative cases in the control arm (C: 38% vs. CL: 26%, p = 0.03). Conclusions: We found that physicians made decisions consistent with actual practice, that we could manipulate cognitive load, and that load increased the use of heuristics, as predicted by cognitive theory. © 2014 Mohan et al

Mobile phone text messaging intervention to improve alertness and reduce sleepiness and fatigue during shiftwork among emergency medicine clinicians: Study protocol for the SleepTrackTXT pilot randomized controlled trial

Background: Mental and physical fatigue while at work is common among emergency medical services (EMS) shift workers. Extended shifts (for example 24 hours) and excessive amounts of overtime work increase the likelihood of negative safety outcomes and pose a challenge for EMS fatigue-risk management. Text message-based interventions are a potentially high-impact, low-cost platform for sleep and fatigue assessment and distributing information to workers at risk of negative safety outcomes related to sleep behaviors and fatigue.Methods/Design: We will conduct a pilot randomized trial with a convenience sample of adult EMS workers recruited from across the United States using a single study website. Participants will be allocated to one of two possible arms for a 90-day study period. The intervention arm will involve text message assessments of sleepiness, fatigue, and difficulty with concentration at the beginning, during, and end of scheduled shifts. Intervention subjects reporting high levels of sleepiness or fatigue will receive one of four randomly selected intervention messages promoting behavior change during shiftwork. Control subjects will receive assessment only text messages. We aim to determine the performance characteristics of a text messaging tool for the delivery of a sleep and fatigue intervention. We seek to determine if a text messaging program with tailored intervention messages is effective at reducing perceived sleepiness and/or fatigue among emergency medicine clinician shift workers. Additional aims include testing whether a theory-based behavioral intervention, delivered by text message, changes 'alertness behaviors'.Discussion: The SleepTrackTXT pilot trial could provide evidence of compliance and effectiveness that would support rapid widespread expansion in one of two forms: 1) a stand-alone program in the form of a tailored/individualized sleep monitoring and fatigue reduction support service for EMS workers; or 2) an add-on to a multi-component fatigue risk management program led and maintained by employers or by safety and risk management services.Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT02063737, Registered on 10 January 2014. © 2014 Patterson et al

Network analysis of team communication in a busy emergency department

Background: The Emergency Department (ED) is consistently described as a high-risk environment for patients and clinicians that demands colleagues quickly work together as a cohesive group. Communication between nurses, physicians, and other ED clinicians is complex and difficult to track. A clear understanding of communications in the ED is lacking, which has a potentially negative impact on the design and effectiveness of interventions to improve communications. We sought to use Social Network Analysis (SNA) to characterize communication between clinicians in the ED. Methods. Over three-months, we surveyed to solicit the communication relationships between clinicians at one urban academic ED across all shifts. We abstracted survey responses into matrices, calculated three standard SNA measures (network density, network centralization, and in-degree centrality), and presented findings stratified by night/day shift and over time. Results: We received surveys from 82% of eligible participants and identified wide variation in the magnitude of communication cohesion (density) and concentration of communication between clinicians (centralization) by day/night shift and over time. We also identified variation in in-degree centrality (a measure of power/influence) by day/night shift and over time. Conclusions: We show that SNA measurement techniques provide a comprehensive view of ED communication patterns. Our use of SNA revealed that frequency of communication as a measure of interdependencies between ED clinicians varies by day/night shift and over time. © 2013 Patterson et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

The effect of surveillance and appreciative inquiry on puerperal infections : a longitudinal cohort study in India

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Prehospital intravenous access and fluid resuscitation in severe sepsis: An observational cohort study

Introduction: Prompt treatment of severe sepsis in the Emergency Department reduces deaths, but the role of prehospital fluid resuscitation is unknown. We sought to determine the risk-adjusted association between prehospital fluid administration and hospital mortality among emergency medical services (EMS) patients admitted with severe sepsis. Methods: We performed a prospective, observational study of patients hospitalized with severe sepsis on admission among 45,394 adult EMS encounters taken to 15 hospitals from 11/2009 to 12/2010 by a two-tier EMS system in King County, Washington. The region mandated recording of prehospital intravenous catheter and fluid administration in prehospital records, along with detailed demographic, incident, physiologic, and hospital adjustment variables. We determined the effect of prehospital intravenous catheter or fluid versus no catheter or fluid on all-cause mortality using multivariable logistic regression. Results: Of all encounters, 1,350 met criteria for severe sepsis on admission, of whom 205 (15%) died by hospital discharge, 312 (23%) received prehospital intravenous fluid, 90 (7%) received a prehospital catheter alone and 948 (70%) did not receive catheter or fluid. EMS administered a median prehospital fluid volume of 500 mL (interquartile range (IQR): 200, 1000 mL). In adjusted models, the administration of any prehospital fluid was associated with reduced hospital mortality (Odds ratio =0.46; 95% Confidence interval: 0.23, 0.88; P =0.02) compared to no prehospital fluid. The odds of hospital mortality were also lower among severe sepsis patients treated with prehospital intravenous catheter alone (Odds ratio =0.3; 95% Confidence interval: 0.17 to 0.57; P <0.01). Conclusions: In a population-based study, the administration of prehospital fluid and placement of intravenous access were associated with decreased odds of hospital mortality compared with no prehospital catheter or fluid

Early, Goal-Directed Therapy for Septic Shock - A Patient-Level Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: After a single-center trial and observational studies suggesting that early, goal-directed therapy (EGDT) reduced mortality from septic shock, three multicenter trials (ProCESS, ARISE, and ProMISe) showed no benefit. This meta-analysis of individual patient data from the three recent trials was designed prospectively to improve statistical power and explore heterogeneity of treatment effect of EGDT. METHODS: We harmonized entry criteria, intervention protocols, outcomes, resource-use measures, and data collection across the trials and specified all analyses before unblinding. After completion of the trials, we pooled data, excluding the protocol-based standard-therapy group from the ProCESS trial, and resolved residual differences. The primary outcome was 90-day mortality. Secondary outcomes included 1-year survival, organ support, and hospitalization costs. We tested for treatment-by-subgroup interactions for 16 patient characteristics and 6 care-delivery characteristics. RESULTS: We studied 3723 patients at 138 hospitals in seven countries. Mortality at 90 days was similar for EGDT (462 of 1852 patients [24.9%]) and usual care (475 of 1871 patients [25.4%]); the adjusted odds ratio was 0.97 (95% confidence interval, 0.82 to 1.14; P=0.68). EGDT was associated with greater mean (±SD) use of intensive care (5.3±7.1 vs. 4.9±7.0 days, P=0.04) and cardiovascular support (1.9±3.7 vs. 1.6±2.9 days, P=0.01) than was usual care; other outcomes did not differ significantly, although average costs were higher with EGDT. Subgroup analyses showed no benefit from EGDT for patients with worse shock (higher serum lactate level, combined hypotension and hyperlactatemia, or higher predicted risk of death) or for hospitals with a lower propensity to use vasopressors or fluids during usual resuscitation. CONCLUSIONS: In this meta-analysis of individual patient data, EGDT did not result in better outcomes than usual care and was associated with higher hospitalization costs across a broad range of patient and hospital characteristics. (Funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and others; PRISM ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02030158.

Enhancement of CURB65 score with proadrenomedullin (CURB65-A) for outcome prediction in lower respiratory tract infections: Derivation of a clinical algorithm

Proadrenomedullin (ProADM) confers additional prognostic information to established clinical risk scores in lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI). We aimed to derive a practical algorithm combining the CURB65 score with ProADM-levels in patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and non-CAP-LRTI