AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center’s (ARMC) Medical Residency Program is part of a patient safety research group that has received the prestigious 2016 John M. Eisenberg Award for Innovation in Patient Safety and Quality. The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum (NQF) announced the awards recognizing I-PASS research participants during NQF’s 2017 Annual Conference in Pentagon City, Virginia April 4.
“We are honored to be recognized by the Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum for our work in patient safety and quality care,” said Dominick Zampino, D.O., program director, ARMC’s Medical Residency program. “Our participation in developing and sustaining the proven I-PASS program demonstrates the commitment of our physicians and staff in providing quality care and services for our patients and community every day.”
The study is taking place under the leadership of Zampino and Aileen Hocbo, M.D., FACP, associate program director, Internal Medicine Residency, ARMC, in the Intensive Care Unit at ARMC Mainland Campus. It will continue through June 17. AtlantiCare’s participation is in the second phase of the study, which uses resident training programs as the main driver of the I-PASS framework.
The study involves using I-PASS framework for hand-offs during residents’ shift changes. As part of the national study group, AtlantiCare has played a significant role in helping develop, study, and implement the I-PASS program.
The I-PASS acronym helps providers focus on:
• I – Illness severity
• P – Patient summary
• A – Action list
• S – Situation awareness and contingency planning
• S – Synthesis by receiver
AtlantiCare plans to implement the I-PASS tool across all units in which residents take part in shift-to-shift changes, as well as for shift changes among its team of hospitalists.
“The concept behind the I-PASS tool is making a safe person-to-person hand-off of patients from shift to shift to ensure we are capturing and sharing the most patient information in the safest fashion,” said Hocbo. “AtlantiCare has long worked on safe hand-off policies. This new framework enhances the way we share information.” Hocbo added ARMC is also sharing best practices in patient hand-offs with other study participants.
“Important information and issues can get missed in hand-offs,” explained Zampino. “Through our participation in this study, residents now do face-to-face hand-offs in a quiet room. The hand-off involves the information giver, or resident handing off the care; the receiver, or resident starting the shift and accepting the patient into his or her care; and the observer, discuss information about each patient. These hand-offs include talk-back confirmation. The receiver summarizes what he or she heard. He or she asks questions, and restates key actions and to-do items related to patients’ care.”
I-PASS is a proven package of interventions created to reduce communication failures during patient hand-offs. In a large multi-centre study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, implementation of I-PASS was associated with a 30 percent reduction in medical errors that harm patients.[1] An estimated 80 percent of the most serious medical errors can be linked to communication failures, particularly during patient hand-offs.[2] Hand-offs occur at all changes of shift and whenever a patient changes location in a hospital.
The July 2017 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety will feature the achievements of each award recipient.
For more information about AtlantiCare, visit www.atlanticare.org.
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