Code Critical: Improving Care Delivery for Critically Ill Patients in the Emergency Department

Although certain critically ill patients in emergency departments —such as those experiencing trauma, stroke, and myocardial infarction—often receive care through coordinated team responses, resource allocation and care delivery can vary widely for other high-acuity patients. The absence of a well-defined response process for these patients may result in delay s in care, suboptimal outcomes, and staff dissatisfaction. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to develop, implement, and evaluate an ED-specific alert team response for critically ill medical adult and pediatric patients not meeting criteria for other medical alerts.
Source: Journal of Emergency Nursing: JEN - Category: Nursing Authors: Tags: Practice Improvement Source Type: research