Opioids

Angie SzumlinskiNews

There has been a lot of discussion in the medical community regarding opioid use, opioid overdose, and illegal trafficking of opioids. The frequency of opioid overdose is rapidly increasing partly due to the increased use of prescription narcotics. In fact, drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, with opioids being the most common cause. …

Defibrillators

Angie SzumlinskiNews

Statistics have shown AEDs save lives, however, as with any medical device, they should be used with caution, and they are not without risk. In November 2022, a patient at TriStar Centennial Medical Center suffered burns to his throat, face, head, chest, and hands when a fire erupted during the use of a defibrillator. Sadly, the patient was moved to …

What’s Going On?

Angie SzumlinskiNews

Two residents found dead in nursing home. Three women die during heatwave at senior living facility. Nursing home cited for resident’s death related to internal bleeding. Senior living deaths over holidays due to freezing temperatures! These are just a few of the articles published in local newspapers across the country since late fall. What’s going on? Are we experiencing an …

AHRQ – Measuring Safety

Angie SzumlinskiStudies, Training

Care home settings, such as nursing homes or residential care homes, present unique challenges to patient safety. This systematic review published by the National Library of Medicine identified several gaps in the available safety measures used for quality monitoring and improvement in older adult care homes, including patient experience (i.e., quality of life or other resident-reported indicators of safety, psychological …

Assisted Living Accreditation Program

Angie SzumlinskiAnnouncements, Featured

The Joint Commission announced the launch of a new Assisted Living Community (ALC) accreditation program. The program will help assisted living organizations deliver consistent and reliable care for residents. Applications will begin to be accepted on July 1. Today more than 30,000 ALCs in the United States serve more than 80,000 residents. ALCs have been increasingly shifting from a mostly …

Family visiting grandfather in nursing home

Patient and Family Engagement – Approach to Safety

Angie SzumlinskiStudies

Engaged families and residents are happier families and residents, and now we may have more insight as to “why” that is! A study recently released by Patient Safety Network (psnet.ahrq.gov) identifies that when families and patients are engaged and involved with the overall care of their loved one, safety improves! Barriers to effective engagement include limited patient/family knowledge, poor communication …

Is Efficiency a Trade-off For Safety?

Angie SzumlinskiCompliance, Health

A randomized clinical trial conducted on a study group of over 3,300 Clinicians, who in total recorded almost 4.5 million order sessions, discovered a causative behavior between the number of patient records open at a time and the number of wrong-patient order errors incurred. Clinicians were placed in one of two groups. The first could only have one record open …