title: Quality and safety in pediatric anesthesia.
abstract: Health care quality and value are leading issues in medicine today for patients, health care professionals, and policy makers. Outcome, safety, and service-the components of quality-have been used to define value when placed in the context of cost. Health care organizations and professionals are faced with the challenge of improving quality while reducing health care related costs to improve value. Measurement of quality is essential for assessing what is effective and what is not when working toward improving quality and value. However, there are few tools currently for assessing quality of care, and clinicians often lack the resources and skills required to conduct quality improvement work. In this article, we provide a brief review of quality improvement as a discipline and describe these efforts within pediatric anesthesiology.
authors.affiliation: From the *Department of Anesthesia, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio; †Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Seattle Children's Hospital and University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington; ‡Division of Pediatric Cardiac Anesthesiology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee; §Department of Anesthesiology, Mayo Clinic Children's Center, Rochester, Minnesota; ‖Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Welch Medical Library, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and ¶Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland.
authors.forename: Anna M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Varughese
authors.forename: Sally E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Rampersad
authors.forename: Gina M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Whitney
authors.forename: Randall P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Flick
authors.forename: Blair
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Anton
authors.forename: Eugenie S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Heitmiller
mesh_terms: D000758:Anesthesia / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000592:standards*; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D061214:Patient Safety / Q000592:standards*; D010372:Pediatrics / Q000592:standards*; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000517:prevention & control; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D058996:Quality Improvement; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care / Q000592:standards; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome