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Conference Proceedings: Select Abstracts Presented At 2023 Advocate Aurora Scientific Day

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

This abstract supplement includes findings presented at the 49th annual Advocate Aurora Scientific Day on May 24, 2023. The Scientific Day symposium provides a virtual forum for the sharing of preliminary results from research and case studies conducted by faculty, fellows, residents, and other health professionals associated with Illinois-based Advocate Health Care and Wisconsin-based Aurora Health Care.

Improving Perioperative Communication: Can Labelled Theatre Caps Play A Role?, Maree Yates, Paula Foran

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

Studies have shown that approximately one third of operating room communications fail. This has a negative impact on patient safety, with half of all adverse events being attributed to communication failures. However, human factors have the capacity to protect patients. Aviation’s human factors strategies provide guidance for staff and are beneficial in the operating room. Currently, no intervention is universally applied to improve operating room communication and team performance. Closed loop communication, though poorly utilised, has been demonstrated to counteract communication errors, therefore protecting patient safety. In 2018, calls were made to take advantage of theatre caps to display staff …

Uncertainty In Post-Anaesthesia Nursing Clinical Reasoning: An Integrative Review In The Light Of The Model Of Uncertainty In Complex Health Care Settings, Lara Daniela Matos Cunha, Márcia Pestana-Santos, Lurdes Lomba, Margarida Reis Santos

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

Problem identification: Post-anaesthesia nursing plays an important role in the early detection and treatment of clinical deterioration after surgery and/or anaesthesia. Concomitantly, the effectiveness of post-operative care is highly dependent on the accurate analysis, synthesis of patient data and quality of diagnostic decisions through clinical reasoning. Given the dynamic processes required to come to a diagnosis, uncertainty is common in clinical reasoning and expected during practice. Nevertheless, uncertainty may permeate the foundations of clinical reasoning, which can jeopardise diagnostic accuracy and consequently the quality and safety of health care.

Literature search: The objectives of this review are to identify available …

Undertaking The Surgical Count: An Observational Study, Victoria Ruth Warwick, Brigid M. Gillespie, Anne Mcmurray, Karen G. Clark-Burg

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

Objective

To systematically measure and describe perioperative nurses’ surgical count practices using the Surgical Count Observational Tool, to measure conformity with standardised processes and identify barriers and enablers influencing nurses’ practices.

Sample and setting

A large public tertiary hospital in Western Australia.

Methods

The Surgical Count Observational Tool (SCOT) was developed using the Content Validity Index over two Delphi panel rounds and then pilot tested. Individual observations were analysed according to 14 criteria based on the 2016 Australian College of Perioperative Nurses (ACORN) standard ‘Management of accountable items used during surgery and procedures’¹. Count processes were observed over …

Identifying Barriers To Patient Advocacy In The Promotion Of A Safety Culture: An Integrative Review, Teena Shoemark, Paula Foran

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

Problem identification

Promoting patient safety, through patient advocacy, is an important part of the perioperative nurse role. However, identified barriers to effective patient advocacy have also reflected deficits in the characteristics of safety culture. This integrative review aims to highlight these barriers and discuss strategies for promoting patient safety within the perioperative context by presenting links between patient advocacy and safety culture.

Literature search

An electronic search of the databases, EBSCOhost, Academic search ultimate, Cumulative Index Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Healthsource, MEDLINE and PubMed, was undertaken and yielded ten articles for inclusion. Primary research included in this review …

Covid Changes To Post Anaesthesia Care Unit Nursing Practices, Heather J. Stapleton

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

The pandemic year of 2020 brought unparalleled and swift changes to health care processes within Australia. All registered nurses in the Post Anaesthesia Care Unit (PACU) of a regional tertiary referral hospital had to make changes to routine personal protective equipment (PPE) practice to accommodate a safer environment for both staff and patients. Changes to PPE practices included the addition of heat moisture exchange (HME) filters to laryngeal mask airways (LMAs), and the use of Level 3 surgical masks during aerosolising procedures such as extubation and nebulisation. Changes were also made to the structured handover from anaesthetic nurse to the …

The Impact Of Distractions And Interruptions In The Operating Room On Patient Safety And The Operating Room Team: An Integrative Review, Sonia Mackenzie, Paula Foran

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

Problem identification: In the operating room (OR), distractions and interruptions are frequent, impacting patient safety, coordination and efficiency and causing errors and patient harm. The OR team is impacted while attempting to perform critical work. This review explores the impact of distractions and interruptions in the OR on patient safety and the OR team.

Literature search: Inclusion and exclusion criteria were determined. Six databases were searched with the search criteria for inclusion being in English, peer-reviewed and published between 2014 and 2019. In total 296 papers were identified.

Data evaluation synthesis: Duplicates were removed, and 195 papers were screened …

Perioperative Nurses’ Engagement With The Surgical Safety Checklist: A Focused Ethnography, Julie A. Rogers, Paul Mcleish, Jan Alderman

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

Purpose

To gain greater insight into how nurses engage with the multidisciplinary team during the surgical safety checklist process.

Participants and setting

Participants were a purposeful sample of eight operating room nurses. The study was conducted in the operating room department of a major tertiary teaching hospital in South Australia.

Methods

Phase 1 employed participant observations while phase 2 employed semi-structured interviews.

Findings

Participants supported the use of the surgical safety checklist and valued its role to enhance patient safety. Multidisciplinary team culture played a significant role in how the checklist was conducted and heavily influenced the level of nurse …

Evaluation Of An Advanced Quality Improvement Program, Arjun M. Dangre Bds Mph, Angelo P. Giardino Md, Phd

Journal of Nursing & Interprofessional Leadership in Quality & Safety

Texas Children’s Hospital implemented the Advanced Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Program (AQI) in 2009, designed to train clinicians and staff to develop leaders in quality improvement to improve patient care, lower costs, change culture, and lead improvement initiatives at the organization. Evaluations of the AQI programs measured the program’s effectiveness in achieving its goals and objectives. This paper describes the Texas Children’s Hospital’s Advanced Quality Improvement and Patient Safety program (AQI,) the program’s evaluation processes, and show the results of the evaluation of the AQI programs using evaluation surveys completed by QI participants over the span of 13 successful …

The Patient, Case, Individual And Environmental Factors That Impact On The Surgical Count Process: An Integrative Review, Victoria Ruth Warwick, Brigid M. Gillespie, Anne Mcmurray, Karen G. Clark-Burg

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

Problem identification

The surgical count is an integral component of the perioperative nurse’s role designed to reduce the risk of unintentional retained items (URIs) during surgery. Current literature provides statistical data that URIs continue to occur which has exposed a lack of adherence to the surgical count process as a possible contributing factor. This review was undertaken to identify what is currently known about perioperative nurses’ practices in relation to the surgical count and the perceived barriers and enablers when trying to follow best practice as outlined in ACORN’s Standards for Perioperative Nursing in Australia.

Literature search

The objective …

Letter To The Editor: Patient And Staff Experiences With Inpatient Video Monitoring, Eric Shoemaker Md, Aysha Athar Do, Jonathon Brewis Md, Daniel Angell Do, Rana Zaban Do

Clinical Research in Practice: The Journal of Team Hippocrates

We describe the patient experience with remote video monitoring on a general practice inpatient floor in the hospital. We raise questions about unexplored areas relevant to this practice.

A Standardized Hand-Off Tool For Undergraduate Nursing Students, Abigail Sutton, Stacie Hunsaker

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In establishing patient safety, communication is one of the most important components to consider. In order to coordinate a patient’s care properly, the multiple and diverse healthcare providers must operate smoothly as a team through well-constructed communication techniques. TeamSTEPPS is a government designed program to educated healthcare professionals on how to work and communicate effectively as a team. The program initiators included specific tools to be used to perform hand-offs. Hand-offs is when a healthcare professional transfers crucial information requiring a patient’s care with another healthcare professional. This is an extremely important process because it can cause devastating results if …

Reshaping Perioperative Nursing Practice To Get The Job Done: A Constructivist Grounded Theory Study, Sharon Bingham, Kenneth Walsh, Karen Ford

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

No abstract provided.

Electronic Health Records And Patient Safeety: Nurse Practitioners’ Experiences In Clinical Practice, Lindsay Dixon, Karen Whitt

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this project was to evaluate practicing nurse practitioners’ experiences and satisfaction with electronic health records (EHRs). In response to health policy initiatives and incentives, many healthcare organizations in the U.S. have recently implemented EHRs in clinical practice. Despite expectations that EHRs can improve patient safety, there is evidence that EHRs have the potential to contribute to adverse patient events and medical errors. Therefore, an urgent need to improve the safety of EHRs has been recognized. In June 2015, a study was conducted by Dr. Karen Whitt that invited nurse practitioners to share their experiences and satisfaction with …

The Collaborative Development Of A Pre-Operative Checklist: An E-Delphi Study, Katherine Murphy, Kim Walker, Jed Duff, Robyn Williams

Journal of Perioperative Nursing

The aim of this study was to identify which items should be included in a pre-operative checklist based on recommendations by nurse experts in order to promote patient safety and effective communication in the perioperative environment.

Method: Thirty-five nurses participated in this e-Delphi study, which was conducted online via SurveyMonkey.. Each survey presented participants with a list of potential items for inclusion in a pre-operative checklist. Participants were asked to identify items they felt should be included in the checklist with the option to include comments. Comments were de-identified and shared with other participants to allow confidential interaction. The surveys …

Educational Strategies For Reducing Medication Errors Committed By Student Nurses: A Literature Review, Kristi Miller, Lisa Haddad, Kenneth D. Phillips

International Journal of Health Sciences Education

Medication errors cause harm, yet most of them are preventable (Institute of Medicine, 2006). Nurses spend 40% of their time administering medications; therefore they play a key role in the reduction of medication errors. Little empirical evidence has been collected about the effectiveness of nursing education in reducing medication errors committed by nursing students. Traditional educational interventions focus on the five rights of medication administration; however, the literature shows that interventions focused on instilling a culture of safety have a greater impact on reducing medication errors. The purpose of this article is to review educational strategies that have been implemented …

Exploring The Influence Of Charge Nurses On Patient Safety, Charity Rowley, Dr. Katreena Merrill

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In 2010, The Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that adverse events during hospitalization contribute to the deaths of 180,000 patients each year! The study at hand was based on these findings and aims to improve the safety in the hospital environment.