Monoplace Delivery System

Monthly Hyperbaric Safety Notice: November 2006

Environment of Care Rounds

Background

Several checklists are incorporated into our hyperbaric operations in order to enhance the quality of patient care and level of patient safety. Providing they are completed in their entirety and on the schedule noted, one can anticipate that adverse events related to equipment and operational processes will be minimized to an acceptable degree.

The Issue

Organizations that provide oversight to the health care industry continue to express concern regarding the incidence of adverse events and ‘near-misses’. Careful review of these events allows a focus response, usually in the form of a recommendation as to how a particular piece of biomedical equipment or a patient-related procedure should be operated or conducted, respectively.

In accordance with safety guidelines set forth by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and further supported by the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS) Accreditation Counsel, an ‘Environment of Care Rounds’ checklist has been introduced and it addresses the entire treatment facility, and adjacent access areas.

Bottom Line

Effective immediately, in order to ensure compliance with national safety initiatives the ‘Environment of Care Rounds’ checklist is to be completed by each hyperbaric facility on a monthly basis. The checklist should be familiar to all clinical staff members. A copy is linked here. A completed copy of the checklist shall be reviewed monthly by the manager and maintained along with all the other unit monthly inspection forms. Issues of non-compliance shall be noted on the form and addressed accordingly.

Contributing Author: Stacy Handley, RN, BSN, ACHRN, CWCN

Stacy Handley Stacy is Vice President of National Baromedical Services. She assumed her present position following several years as nurse manager of the NBS hyperbaric medicine service at Memorial Hospital, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Stacy oversees the patient care aspects of the NBS network, conducts quality assurance and compliance assessments and preceptors all new NBS nurse managers. Additional responsibilities include marketing and promotion of NBS service lines and generation of monthly safety notices. Stacy is Member at Large for the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society Associates and a board member for the Baromedical Nurses Association. She has trained as a Hyperbaric Safety Director and a UHMS faculty accreditation surveyor, and is a graduate of the Medical University of South Carolina ‘Wound Care Specialty Course’ through which she obtained her wound care certification.

Full Panel of Safety and Technical Correspondents

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