Page 38
allied
academies
Journal of Nutrition and Human Health | Volume 2
&
October 29-30, 2018 | London, UK
Joint Event
Nutrition and Fitness
16
th
International Conference on
3
rd
World Congress on
Card i o l ogy
Assessing performance and reliability in cardiovascular care
Paul Barach
Wayne State University, USA
P
atients hospitalized for cardiovascular problems are
vulnerable to experiencing medication errors, as they
are commonly prescribed high-risk medications such as
anticoagulants and antiplatelet agents. The cardiac surgical
operating room (OR) is a complex environment in which
highly trained subspecialists interact with each other using
sophisticated equipment to care for patients with severe
cardiac disease and significant comorbidities. Thousands of
patient lives have been saved or significantly improved with
the advent of modern cardiac surgery. Nonetheless, the highly
skilled and dedicated personnel in cardiac ORs are human and
will make errors. Refined techniques, advanced technologies,
and enhanced coordination of care have led to significant
improvements in cardiac surgery outcomes. However, more
than 10 years after the Institute of Medicine report,there
is little evidence that much progress has been achieved in
reducing or preventing errors.
The tools to measure potential risks and interventions to
improve patient safety are highly validated and yet have been
implemented in a very uneven and scatter manner. We must
extend the conversation of perioperative cardiac outcomes
and expand our assessment beyond patient factors and the
technical skills of the cardiologist /surgeon /anesthesia/
nurse; to extend assessment of skills beyond bench models
to the operating theater and its equipment; to provide a
basis for assessing interventions; and to provide a deeper
understanding of surgical outcomes. We must consider the
human/environmental factors that have been found to be
of important in achieving safe, high-quality performance
in other high-risk environments. Issues that impact human
performance and increase the risk of error include factors
that directly enable decision making, such as perception,
attention, memory, reasoning, judgement and factors that
directly enable decision execution, such as communication
and the ability to carry out the intended action. We must
address the implementation gap between what is known to
work and what is actually implmented.
e:
pbarach@gmail.comNotes: