Description and Evaluation of the Implementation of a Weight-Based, Nurse-Driven Heparin Nomogram in a Tertiary Academic Medical Center.

Weight-based, nurse-driven heparin nomograms are reported in the medical literature to improve the time it takes to reach a minimum threshold for anticoagulation without compromising patient safety in specific indications or patient populations. This is the first report in the literature of an institution-wide protocol implementation and evaluation of effectiveness with simultaneous transition to an electronic health record. The purpose of implementing this practice change at our institution was to standardize practice, improve time to reach therapeutic anticoagulation, and improve patient safety. We conducted a retrospective analysis utilizing a pre/postimplementation design to compare outcomes. The primary end point evaluated was the time to reach minimum threshold value for therapeutic anticoagulation. Additionally, we assessed the percentage of patients who reached minimum threshold therapeutic anticoagulation within 24 hours, the percentage of patients with a critically supratherapeutic activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) value (≥120 seconds) during therapy, and a description of heparin titration for the first 4 aPTT results with nomogram use. Overall time to therapeutic anticoagulation decreased from a mean 18.7 to 11.7 hours (hazard ratio [HR] 1.59; 95% confidence interval 1.22-2.08; P < .0005). Percentage of patients receiving therapeutic anticoagulation within 24 hours increased from 74.4 to 88.5 (odds ratio [OR 2.97, P = .002) and the percentage of patients with an aPTT ≥120 seconds remained constant at 49.9 versus 46.8 (OR 0.92, P = .73). This practice change reduced time to therapeutic anticoagulation without an increase in the proportion of patients with a critically supratherapeutic aPTT at our institution.

Evaluation of use of electronic patient controlled analgesia pumps to improve patient safety in an academic medical center.

Patient controlled analgesia (PCA) and Patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) pumps are methods of pain control with complex smart infusion devices and are widely used in hospitals. Smart PCA/PCEA pumps can be programmed with the dose and rate of medications within pre-set ranges. However, adverse effects have been reported associated with these pumps' use. In this paper, we describe a prevalence observational study where observers used an electronic data collection tool to record pump settings and medications with PCA pumps, corresponding medication orders to identify errors. The results showed that there were many labeling and tubing change tag errors, which were a violation of hospital policy. A few potential harmful medication errors were identified but no critical errors. Study results suggest the importance of a standard process of PCA pump use. Next steps include implementing a safety bundle for improving PCA practice to support safe and effective pain management.

Impact of smart infusion technology on administration of anticoagulants (unfractionated Heparin, Argatroban, Lepirudin, and Bivalirudin).

This study reviewed 863 alerts generated from the infusion of anticoagulants in 355 patients from October 2003 to January 2005. Alerts were generated by smart infusion technology pumps and recorded in the devices' memory. The most common alerts were underdose alerts (59.8%), followed by overdose alerts (31.3%) and duplicate drug therapy alerts (8.9%). In response to the alerts, users' most frequent action was to cancel (46.5%) or reprogram (43.1%) the infusions. The highest percentage of alerts occurred from 2 to 4 p.m. During the study, there were 4 infusion rate errors, compared with 15 in the immediately preceding 16-month period. In conclusion, smart infusion technology intercepted keypad entry errors, thereby reducing the likelihood of intravenous anticoagulant overdose or underdose. Dose or infusion rate programming during intravenous anticoagulation is an important targets for medication safety interventions.