Effective Communication In EMS

Prevent medical errors & unnecessary spending with effective communication Medical errors, or preventable adverse events, are estimated to cause somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 deaths in the United States every year.1 Experts say the most common causes of medical errors are communication problems and inadequate information flow.2 Perhaps more significant is that up to ten times as many patients may be seriously harmed but not killed.3 These cases often include those where providers don’t even realize the impact that mistakes might have on final outcomes. Miscommunication in EMS In the emergency setting, we don’t have much research about medical errors. Reporting is now being encouraged through systems such as the EMS Voluntary Event Notification Tool (EVENT), but even for agencies that track such occurrences, are they examining the right cases? If an ambulance stays on scene for several minutes attempting to get IV access on a st-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patient instead of rapidly transporting to a cath lab, isn’t that a medical error? In EMS, we’re more likely to make a big deal over a miscalculated drug dose with no impact than a delay in care that might not kill a patient, but may lead to more heart damage and worse outcomes down the road. Even without good data, we suggest that the potential for communication failures is high during the treatment of time-sensitive conditions such as stroke, STEMI, trauma or sepsis from the field to the ED,...
Source: JEMS Administration and Leadership - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Documentation & Patient Care Reporting Administration and Leadership Source Type: news