Critical care transfers - a danger foreseen is half avoided.
How good is the care patients receive during interhospital transfer? The results of a study in this journal make for some disturbing reading. Adverse events occur in about one-third of cases. Half the time this can be related to not following advice from the receiving centre. Of these events, 70% are, in the author's opinion, avoidable and 30% are related to technical problems. So how do we make things better? All transfer equipment needs to be standardized and be "fit-for-purpose". Each hospital needs to take responsibility for the quality of care received in transfer, and this should include guidelines, training and equipment.
Haji-Michael
Philip
P
Christie Hospital, Manchester, UK. critcaredoc@btopenworld.com
D003422:Critical Care / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D010360:Patient Transfer / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data