Pediatric providers, clinicians and quality experts will gather at the Quality and Safety in Children's Health Conference to share successes, failures and ideas to deliver quality care to children. Leaders in quality and safety will work together March 9-11 in Kansas City to learn through presentations, network and discuss many of the challenges children's hospitals are exploring to improve.
The topics at the conference range from improving care coordination, strategies to build clinical effectiveness and affect safety in health care, and ideas for teams to improve quality and safety outcomes. Attendees will choose from 37 sessions and 16 posters focusing on those topics.
Here are a few examples of the session options provided for attendee education and collaboration.
Build medication safety
Three successive sessions give attendees the time to dig into several aspects of medication safety. Pharmacy and safety specialists from Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children and Dayton Children's Hospital team up to share their experiences navigating the complexities of smart pumps and emergency medical record interoperability.
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices recently announced additions and modifications to its list of Targeted Medication Safety Best Practices for Hospitals. A safety officer from Cook Children's will lead a review of the changes and facilitate a discussion focusing on how to improve adoption rates.
Arkansas Children's will discuss the similarities and differences between Safety II and the Learning from Excellence program. Health care professionals can use these models of improvement to proactively anticipate errors. Quality teams have discovered that work in other industries can inform progress in health care. Safety experts from NASA and American Airlines will share how high-risk industries are implementing Safety II concepts.
Address sepsis with technology and data
Early and accurate recognition of pediatric sepsis is challenging because signs of septic shock are not obvious. Teams will present sepsis-related research and practices your hospital can adopt. Yale New Haven Children's Hospital and Children's Hospital Colorado will describe their use of technology and the role it has played in capturing and reducing sepsis cases.
Staff at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital and Nemours Children's Hospital us a Clinical Logistic center to preemptively identify downturns in patients' conditions. Learn how staff developed a sepsis response tool that incorporates a set of protocols to improve patient outcomes.
Manage aggression in behavioral health patients
The increase in behavioral health patients requires additional staff education for treating this population, and awareness to keep staff safe if a patient becomes aggressive. Children's National Medical Center, Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt and Yale New Haven Children's Hospital will discuss their approaches to patient care during aggressive episodes.
Strategies include chartering a Disruptive Patient Task Force to examine the problem and put care delivery systems in place that support quality care and staff safety. Behavioral health patients who present with a chief complaint of aggression make up approximately 20 to 40 of acute emergency department visits each month at Monroe Carell. To improve care and safety, the hospital implemented the Broset Violence Checklist, which helps differentiate between chronic and acute aggressive episodes.
Watch for the Children's Hospitals Today enewsletter on March 12 for more insight on what topics are rising to the top for quality.
Unable to attend this year's event? Mark your calendar for Quality and Safety in Children's Health Conference March 15-17, 2021, in Orlando.
