System-level initiatives to reduce persistently elevated blood pressures in hypertensive patients: how do we overcome clinical inertia?

In the United States, research consistently shows around half of adults with hypertension do not achieve recommended control of their blood pressure (BP).1 Poor BP control at the population level then leads to higher rates of preventable negative cardiovascular outcomes, like strokes and heart attacks. As recently reported, Elizabeth Pfoh and colleagues studied a quality […]

Read More…

Unit culture, testing frequency, and simple interventions: more than meets the eye (test)

Recently, Benjamin Leis (@LeisBenjamin) and colleagues published a short report on an intervention in a cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) in Canada. In this study, the authors removed TSH testing from standard admission order sets with the aim of reducing the number of unnecessary thyroid studies obtained. Often, altering an order set like this is […]

Read More…

Updates in Quality & Safety in the literature

In the latest review of high impact quality and safety articles, authors from the Ann Arbor VA and University of Michigan (including @JMeddings1 and @ashwin_b_gupta) reviewed three recent trials for BMJ Quality & Safety. These trials included: (i) the iCOMPARE trial1 of patient safety outcomes by maximum duration of intern duty hour period in the […]

Read More…

Top 2018 articles on quality improvement

Influencing organisational culture to improve hospital performance in care of patients with acute myocardial infarction: a mixed-methods intervention study – in print, March 2018 issue. https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/27/3/207 In this ambitious work, Curry et al. describe the effects on both culture and clinical outcomes of a 2-year organizational culture-improvement intervention at ten hospitals with at least 200 […]

Read More…

Top 2018 articles on patient safety

2018 saw solid contributions to the literature on patient safety, with three papers demonstrating the importance of reflection and of sound evidence on which to base the design of interventions for improvement.   Transforming concepts in patient safety: a progress report – in print, December 2018 issue. https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/27/12/1019 In this paper, members of the Lucian […]

Read More…

Top 2018 articles on patient and family engagement

Throughout 2018, papers on patient and family engagement in quality and safety were high-impact. In this post, we discuss four papers that illustrate some potential benefits and some of the challenges too. What can patients tell us about the quality and safety of hospital care? Findings from a UK multicentre survey study – in print, […]

Read More…