Jonas Torp Ohlsen, Eirik Søfteland, Per Espen Akselsen, Jörg Assmus, Stig Harthug, Regina Küfner Lein, Nick Sevdalis, Hilde Valen Wæhle, John Øvretveit, Miriam Hartveit
{"title":"Rapid response systems, antibiotic stewardship and medication reconciliation: a scoping review on implementation factors, activities and outcomes.","authors":"Jonas Torp Ohlsen, Eirik Søfteland, Per Espen Akselsen, Jörg Assmus, Stig Harthug, Regina Küfner Lein, Nick Sevdalis, Hilde Valen Wæhle, John Øvretveit, Miriam Hartveit","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017185","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Many patient safety practices are only partly established in routine clinical care, despite extensive quality improvement efforts. Implementation science can offer insights into how patient safety practices can be successfully adopted.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>The objective was to examine the literature on implementation of three internationally used safety practices: medication reconciliation, antibiotic stewardship programmes and rapid response systems. We sought to identify the implementation activities, factors and outcomes reported; the combinations of factors and activities supporting successful implementation; and the implications of the current evidence base for future implementation and research.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We searched Medline, Embase, Web of Science, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PsycINFO and Education Resources Information Center from January 2011 to March 2023. We included original peer-reviewed research studies or quality improvement reports. We used an iterative, inductive approach to thematically categorise data. Descriptive statistics and hierarchical cluster analyses were performed.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>From the 159 included studies, eight categories of implementation activities were identified: <i>education; planning and preparation; method-based approach; audit and feedback; motivate and remind; resource allocation; simulation and training;</i> and <i>patient involvement</i>. Most studies reported activities from multiple categories. Implementation factors included: c<i>linical competence and collaboration; resources; readiness and engagement; external influence; organisational involvement; QI competence;</i> and <i>feasibility of innovation</i>. Factors were often suggested post hoc and seldom used to guide the selection of implementation strategies. Implementation outcomes were reported as: <i>fidelity or compliance; proxy indicator for fidelity; sustainability; acceptability;</i> and <i>spread</i>. Most studies reported implementation improvement, hindering discrimination between more or less important factors and activities.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The multiple activities employed to implement patient safety practices reflect mainly method-based improvement science, and to a lesser degree determinant frameworks from implementation science. There seems to be an unexploited potential for continuous adaptation of implementation activities to address changing contexts. Research-informed guidance on how to make such adaptations could advance implementation in practice.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141282906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Aili Veronica Langford, Imaan Warriach, Aisling M McEvoy, Elisa Karaim, Shyleen Chand, Justin P Turner, Wade Thompson, Barbara J Farrell, Danielle Pollock, Frank Moriarty, Danijela Gnjidic, Nagham J Ailabouni, Emily Reeve
{"title":"What do clinical practice guidelines say about deprescribing? A scoping review.","authors":"Aili Veronica Langford, Imaan Warriach, Aisling M McEvoy, Elisa Karaim, Shyleen Chand, Justin P Turner, Wade Thompson, Barbara J Farrell, Danielle Pollock, Frank Moriarty, Danijela Gnjidic, Nagham J Ailabouni, Emily Reeve","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017101","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Deprescribing (<i>medication dose reduction or cessation</i>) is an integral component of appropriate prescribing. The extent to which deprescribing recommendations are included in clinical practice guidelines is unclear. This scoping review aimed to identify guidelines that contain deprescribing recommendations, qualitatively explore the content and format of deprescribing recommendations and estimate the proportion of guidelines that contain deprescribing recommendations.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Bibliographic databases and Google were searched for guidelines published in English from January 2012 to November 2022. Guideline registries were searched from January 2017 to February 2023. Two reviewers independently screened records from databases and Google for guidelines containing one or more deprescribing recommendations. A 10% sample of the guideline registries was screened to identify eligible guidelines and estimate the proportion of guidelines containing a deprescribing recommendation. Guideline and recommendation characteristics were extracted and language features of deprescribing recommendations including content, form, complexity and readability were examined using a conventional content analysis and the SHeLL Health Literacy Editor tool.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>80 guidelines containing 316 deprescribing recommendations were included. Deprescribing recommendations had substantial variability in their format and terminology. Most guidelines contained recommendations regarding for <i>who</i> (75%, n=60)<i>, what</i> (99%, n=89) and <i>when or why</i> (91%, n=73) to deprescribe, however, fewer guidelines (58%, n=46) contained detailed guidance on <i>how</i> to deprescribe. Approximately 29% of guidelines identified from the registries sample (n=14/49) contained one or more deprescribing recommendations.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Deprescribing recommendations are increasingly being incorporated into guidelines, however, many guidelines do not contain clear and actionable recommendations on <i>how</i> to deprescribe which may limit effective implementation in clinical practice. A co-designed template or best practice guide, containing information on aspects of deprescribing recommendations that are essential or preferred by end-users should be developed and employed.</p><p><strong>Trial registration number: </strong>osf.io/fbex4.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141092820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pragmatic trials are needed to assess the effectiveness of enhanced recovery after surgery protocols on patient safety.","authors":"Antoine Duclos","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016966","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016966","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140012104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Effect of contextual factors on the prevalence of diagnostic errors among patients managed by physicians of the same specialty: a single-centre retrospective observational study.","authors":"Yukinori Harada, Yumi Otaka, Shinichi Katsukura, Taro Shimizu","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2022-015436","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2022-015436","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>There has been growing recognition that contextual factors influence the physician's cognitive processes. However, given that cognitive processes may depend on the physicians' specialties, the effects of contextual factors on diagnostic errors reported in previous studies could be confounded by difference in physicians.</p><p><strong>Objective: </strong>This study aimed to clarify whether contextual factors such as location and consultation type affect diagnostic accuracy.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We reviewed the medical records of 1992 consecutive outpatients consulted by physicians from the Department of Diagnostic and Generalist Medicine in a university hospital between 1 January and 31 December 2019. Diagnostic processes were assessed using the Revised Safer Dx Instrument. Patients were categorised into three groups according to contextual factors (location and consultation type): (1) referred patients with scheduled visit to the outpatient department; (2) patients with urgent visit to the outpatient department; and (3) patients with emergency visit to the emergency room. The effect of the contextual factors on the prevalence of diagnostic errors was investigated using logistic regression analysis.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Diagnostic errors were observed in 12 of 534 referred patients with scheduled visit to the outpatient department (2.2%), 3 of 599 patients with urgent visit to the outpatient department (0.5%) and 13 of 859 patients with emergency visit to the emergency room (1.5%). Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed a significantly higher prevalence of diagnostic errors in referred patients with scheduled visit to the outpatient department than in patients with urgent visit to the outpatient department (OR 4.08, p=0.03), but no difference between patients with emergency and urgent visit to the emergency room and outpatient department, respectively.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Contextual factors such as consultation type may affect diagnostic errors; however, since the differences in the prevalence of diagnostic errors were small, the effect of contextual factors on diagnostic accuracy may be small in physicians working in different care settings.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10598818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eva Pagano, Luca Pellegrino, Manuela Robella, Anna Castiglione, Francesco Brunetti, Lisa Giacometti, Monica Rolfo, Alessio Rizzo, Sarah Palmisano, Maurizio Meineri, Ilaria Bachini, Mario Morino, Marco Ettore Allaix, Alfredo Mellano, Paolo Massucco, Paola Bellomo, Roberto Polastri, Giovannino Ciccone, Felice Borghi
{"title":"Implementation of an enhanced recovery after surgery protocol for colorectal cancer in a regional hospital network supported by audit and feedback: a stepped wedge, cluster randomised trial.","authors":"Eva Pagano, Luca Pellegrino, Manuela Robella, Anna Castiglione, Francesco Brunetti, Lisa Giacometti, Monica Rolfo, Alessio Rizzo, Sarah Palmisano, Maurizio Meineri, Ilaria Bachini, Mario Morino, Marco Ettore Allaix, Alfredo Mellano, Paolo Massucco, Paola Bellomo, Roberto Polastri, Giovannino Ciccone, Felice Borghi","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016594","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016594","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocols are known to potentially improve the management and outcomes of patients undergoing colorectal surgery, with limited evidence of their implementation in hospital networks and in a large population. We aimed to assess the impact of the implementation of an ERAS protocol in colorectal cancer surgery in the entire region of Piemonte, Italy, supported by an audit and feedback (A&F) intervention.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A large, stepped wedge, cluster randomised trial enrolled patients scheduled for elective surgery at 29 general surgery units (clusters). At baseline (first 3 months), standard care was continued in all units. Thereafter, four groups of clusters began to adopt the ERAS protocol successively. By the end of the study, each cluster had a period in which standard care was maintained (control) and a period in which the protocol was applied (experimental). ERAS implementation was supported by initial training and A&F initiatives. The primary endpoint was length of stay (LOS) without outliers (>94th percentile), and the secondary endpoints were outliers for LOS, postoperative medical and surgical complications, quality of recovery and compliance with ERAS items.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Of 2626 randomised patients, 2397 were included in the LOS analysis (1060 in the control period and 1337 in the experimental period). The mean LOS without outliers was 8.5 days during the control period (SD 3.9) and 7.5 (SD 3.5) during the experimental one. The adjusted difference between the two periods was a reduction of -0.58 days (95% CI -1.07, -0.09; p=0.021). The compliance with ERAS items increased from 52.4% to 67.3% (estimated absolute difference +13%; 95% CI 11.4%, 14.7%). No difference in the occurrence of complications was evidenced (OR 1.22; 95% CI 0.89, 1.68).</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Implementation of the ERAS protocol for colorectal cancer, supported by A&F approach, led to a substantial improvement in compliance and a reduction in LOS, without meaningful effects on complications. <b>Trial registration number</b> NCT04037787.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11103294/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139995556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘This time is different’: physician knowledge in the age of artificial intelligence","authors":"Gurpreet Dhaliwal","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017141","url":null,"abstract":"Great diagnosticians are often portrayed as recognising rare diseases that evade the efforts of mere mortals. This makes for great TV and local legends, but does not reflect daily practice, where the most common diagnostic challenge is discriminating between common conditions like pneumonia and heart failure or appendicitis and gastroenteritis. Questions about how to train the brain to make those distinctions are central to the efforts of many clinician educators. An unresolved issue is whether the structure of knowledge (about diseases and diagnostic pathways) in the physician’s long-term memory or the clinician’s mode of cognition (intuitive or analytical thinking) is more deterministic of diagnostic success. A study1 in this issue of BMJQS sheds light on this issue, but also invites a broader question: is physician cognition still essential for this task at all? In a two-phase experiment, Mamede et al 1 asked 68 internal medicine residents to recall from memory the key clinical features of six conditions (vitamin B12 deficiency, inflammatory bowel disease, hyperthyroidism, adrenal insufficiency, appendicitis, endocarditis). Physicians were categorised as high knowledge (HK) or low knowledge (LK) based on their recall of discriminating features, which are essential to differentiate one condition from common competing diagnoses. One week later, the residents were given related clinical vignettes and asked to render a diagnosis. Half of the vignettes had a salient distracting feature (SDF), a clinical finding that may prompt the physician to suspect a condition other than the correct diagnosis. For example, a vignette of a confused patient included a family history of dementia, which was irrelevant in the face of strong evidence for vitamin B12 deficiency. The authors used the SDF as a model for activating the anchoring heuristic , which is a tendency to adhere to an early judgement triggered by a data point. Essentially, …","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140840466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Myrtede Alfred, Laura H Barg-Walkow, Joseph R Keebler, Alex Chaparro
{"title":"Checking all the boxes: a checklist for when and how to use checklists effectively","authors":"Myrtede Alfred, Laura H Barg-Walkow, Joseph R Keebler, Alex Chaparro","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016934","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016934","url":null,"abstract":"Checklists are a type of cognitive aid used to guide task performance; they have been adopted as an important safety intervention throughout many high-risk industries. They have become an ubiquitous tool in many medical settings due to being easily accessible and perceived as easy to design and implement. However, there is a lack of understanding for when to use checklists and how to design them, leading to substandard use and suboptimal effectiveness of this intervention in medical settings. The design of a checklist must consider many factors including what types of errors it is intended to address, the experience and technical competencies of the targeted users, and the specific tools or equipment that will be used. Although several taxonomies have been proposed for classifying checklist types, there is, however, little guidance on selecting the most appropriate checklist type, nor how differences in user expertise can influence the design of the checklist. Therefore, we developed an algorithm to provide guidance on checklist use and design. The algorithm, intended to support conception and content/design decisions, was created based on the synthesis of the literature on checklists and our experience developing and observing the use of checklists in clinical environments. We then refined the algorithm iteratively based on subject matter experts’ feedback provided at each iteration. The final algorithm included two parts: the first part provided guidance on the system safety issues for which a checklist is best suited, and the second part provided guidance on which type of checklist should be developed with considerations of the end users’ expertise.","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140840739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Taking action on inequities: a structural paradigm for quality and safety","authors":"Tara A Burra, Christine Soong, Brian M Wong","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-017027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2023-017027","url":null,"abstract":"As quality improvement and patient safety (QIPS) practitioners, we aspire to improve care for all patients, caregivers and families using improvement methods. While teams are trained to carefully implement the science of improvement, less is known of how to effectively incorporate equity into QIPS work. Should there be more projects focused specifically on equity, or should equity be embedded into all quality improvement? Inattention to the equity domain in improvement efforts ignores systemic biases and can worsen inequities in health outcomes. How to measure inequity, and growing calls to reframe health equity data measurement, presentation and analysis are central to this discourse. In this issue of BMJ Quality and Safety , Arrington and colleagues1 offer strategies to collect, share and interpret quality data using a racial equity lens. The authors first describe the problems with stratifying quality data by race and ethnicity, which can perpetuate the false notion that race or ethnicity is responsible for differences in health outcomes and inhibit teams from identifying embedded structural or systemic root causes of health inequities. They provide concrete examples of reimagining data collection and presentation that are actionable and feasible. These include considering root causes beyond describing differences among racial groups, choosing reference points equitably (eg, avoiding using outcomes of white patients as reference points), presenting the most specific level of aggregation (eg, identifying race as ‘Chinese’ rather than ‘Asian’), collecting data on strengths (eg, describing groups with positive outcomes) rather than deficits, measuring racism instead of race and collaborating with community partners. Using this framework, the narrative shifts away from race and ethnicity to a focus on unjust systems, structures and practices responsible for health inequities. As articulated by Arrington and colleagues,1 adopting a racial equity lens to the interpretation of stratified QIPS data is an essential skill that …","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140840503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zhen Zeng, Dong (Roman) Xu, Yiyuan Cai, Wenjie Gong
{"title":"Assessing quality of direct-to-consumer telemedicine in China: a cross-sectional study using unannounced standardised patients","authors":"Zhen Zeng, Dong (Roman) Xu, Yiyuan Cai, Wenjie Gong","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017072","url":null,"abstract":"Direct-to-onsumer telemedicine (DTCT) has become popular as an alternative to traditional care. However, uncertainties about the potential risks associated with the lack of comprehensive quality evaluation could influence its long-term development. This study aimed to assess the quality of care provided by DTCT platforms in China using unannounced standardised patients (USP) between July 2021 and January 2022. The study assessed consultation services on both hospital and enterprise-sponsored platforms using the Institute of Medicine quality framework. It employed 10 USP cases, covering conditions such as diabetes, asthma, common cold, gastritis, angina, low back pain, child diarrhoea, child dermatitis, stress urinary incontinence and postpartum depression. Descriptive and regression analyses were employed to examine platform characteristics and compare quality across platform types. The results showed that of 170 USP visits across 107 different telemedicine platforms, enterprise-sponsored platforms achieved a 100% success in access, while hospital-sponsored platforms had a success rate of only 47.5% (56/118). Analysis highlighted a low overall correct diagnosis rate of 45% and inadequate adherence to clinical guidelines across all platforms. Notably, enterprise-sponsored platforms outperformed in accessibility, response time and case management compared with hospital-sponsored platforms. This study highlights the suboptimal quality of DTCT platforms in China, particularly for hospital-sponsored platforms. To further enhance DTCT services, future studies should compare DTCT and in-person care, aiming to identify gaps and potential risks associated with using DTCT as alternatives or supplements to traditional care. The potential of future development in enhancing DTCT services may involve exploring the integration of hospital resources with the technology and market capabilities of enterprise-sponsored platforms.","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140840502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}