Week 9: Quality Informatics

This week, we had fall break for a few days but still had to go to school Wednesday. We learned about quality improvement and different ways health care errors happen. Did you know that health care errors are the 8th leading cause of death in the United States?! I hadn't realized they happened that frequently. These last few weeks, I've noticed that hospitals are not near as safe as I once thought they were! The chances of you acquiring another infection or experiencing an error are extremely high! In fact, we learned that 1 in 20 inpatients will experience a hospital acquired infection. That is an extremely high number!

Healthcare Acquired Infections by the percentages.

I had absolutely no idea what to write for week 9 (because, if you haven't noticed, I'm writing it a week late) but got my inspiration during clinicals. During clinicals on Thursday, I saw a few quality improvement mistakes. I'll tell you about the first one.

My patient had a precautions sign on her door which warned anyone entering to put on PPE (gown, gloves, and mask). She had C. diff (a horrible diarrhea infection) which is highly contagious. I put on full PPE and cared for her.

Then the nurse informed me that she just checked my patient's chart and my patient was negative for C. diff. The precautions sign was taken down and PPE was no longer required. No one interacting with the patient had to wear PPE anymore (except for gloves during certain interactions).

At the end of the shift, the nurse came back up to me and said, "I'm sorry, I just looked at looked at her chart again and realized that I read her results wrong - your patient does have C. diff!"

?!

You mean to tell me that I've cared for this patient for the last several hours with no gown or mask and sometimes no gloves and she was positive for this horrible, contagious bacteria the whole time?!

I was not happy.

Thankfully, I never got the bacteria (it has a 7 day incubation period and today's day 8) but if I did, I would have been SOOO upset at that nurse.

Anyway, it was just a perfect example for quality improvement.

So, anyway, always always always wear your PPE!!!! It protects not only you, but your other patients and anyone you might bring the bacteria/virus home to!

Remember, safety first!

...Until next week!