Do Patients and Relatives Have Different Dispositions When Challenging Healthcare Professionals About Patient Safety? Results Before and After an Educational Program.

BACKGROUND: There is a universal interest in evaluating the new roles of patients to improve patient safety. However, relatively little is known about the contribution of family caregivers. The purposes of this study was to determine whether patients and relatives (P&Rs) have different dispositions when challenging healthcare professionals about patient safety and to measure the influence of an educational program. METHODS: An interventional before-and-after design was used to determine the P&Rs' basal level of willingness and the influence of a training program. One hundred thirty-six participants were recruited, 90 patients and 46 relatives, from the Day Hospital of a Tertiary Hospital in Spain, in 2018.The safe practices selected were as follows: patient identification, hand hygiene, blood or chemotherapy identification, and secondary effects of treatment. The educational materials comprised brochures and story-type videos. A questionnaire measured participants' willingness to speak up before and after the training. RESULTS: One hundred thirty-six P&Rs (63% response rate) agreed to participate. The hypothesis that relatives are more willing to challenge healthcare professionals could not be proven. Their willingness to speak up depended on the type of safe practice both before and after training, ranging from 42% to 87%. The percentage of items that P&Rs were willing to challenge increased after the training among both the patients and the relatives, but statically significant differences were only seen among patients. CONCLUSIONS: After the training, participants' willingness to challenge healthcare workers was high for all safe practices analyzed but hand hygiene. Patients and relatives had very similar willingness. After the training, participants felt confident with their knowledge about safe practices, thereby increasing their challenging attitude.

Patients and relatives as auditors of safe practices in oncology and hematology day hospitals.

BACKGROUND: When there is a gap in professionals' adherence to safe practices during cancer treatment, the consequences can be serious. Identifying these gaps in order to enable improvements in patient safety can be a challenge. This study aimed to assess if cancer patients and their relatives can be given the skills to audit reliably four safe practices, and to explore whether they are willing to play this new role. METHODS: We recruited 136 participants in 2018, from the oncology and haematology day hospital of a tertiary hospital in Spain. Patient identification, hand hygiene, blood or chemotherapy identification, and side effects related to transfusion and chemotherapy, were the safe practices selected for evaluation. The study comprised two parts: an interventional educational program and a cross-sectional design to collect data and assess to what degree participants are able and willing to be auditors depending on their characteristics using multivariate logistic regression models. A participant's auditing skill were assessed pre and post the educational intervention. RESULTS: The model was seeking predictors of being a good auditor. 63 participants (46.3%) were classified as good auditors after the training. To have younger age, higher educational level and to have had an experience of an adverse event were associated with a higher probability of being a good auditor. Additionally, 106 (77.9%) participants said that they would like to audit anonymously the professionals' compliance of at least three of four safe practices. The willingness to audit safe practices differed depending on the safe practice but these differences did not reach statistical significance. CONCLUSIONS: The data gathered by patients and relatives acting as auditors can provide healthcare organizations with valuable information about safety and quality of care that is not accessible otherwise. This new role provides an innovative way to engage patients and their families' in healthcare safety where other methods have not had success. The paper sets out the methods that healthcare organizations need to undertake to enrol and train patients and relatives in an auditor role.

Edema agudo de pulmón no cardiogénico en el postoperatorio inmediato / Noncardiogenic acute pulmonary edema in the immediate postoperative period

Acute non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema is a rare clinical entity which sometimes complicates the perioperative period. Even though one of the main causes is the acute obstruction of the airway, which may occur during a laryngospasm event, its etiology is varied and must be known for an adequate clinical management. We report the case of an 18 year old patient who developed postoperative acute non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema, probably of mixed etiology.

El edema agudo de pulmón (EAP) no cardiogénico es una entidad poco habitual que complica en ocasiones el período perioperatorio. Aunque una de las principales causas es la obstrucción aguda de la vía aérea que puede ocurrir durante un episodio de laringoespasmo, su etiología es variada y debe ser conocida para un adecuado manejo clínico. Presentamos el caso de un paciente de 18 años que desarrolló un EAP no cardiogénico postoperatorio, de etiología probablemente mixta.