In this episode, we talk about how healthcare practitioners give medicine through a vein, and a way that healthcare organizations can make it safer for patients. We’ll discuss why ready-to-administer medications are safer, and what patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers should know. You can find ISMP’s Safe Practice Guidelines for Adult IV Push Medications at https://home.ecri.org/blogs/ismp-resources/safe-practice-guidelines-for-adult-iv-push-medications.

This episode is made possible through an education grant from Fresenius Kabi.

Medical emergencies evoke images of the hospital emergency department or emergency medical personnel responding in the community. But medical emergencies can occur anywhere, including in office and clinic settings—and sometimes those emergencies involve medications. In this episode, Dr. Kelley Shultz describes challenges in responding to emergencies in the office setting and steps they can take to prevent emergencies and respond when they do occur.

As the school year is winding down, children across the nation are getting ready to attend summer camps. Many of them will need prescription and over-the-counter medications while they’re at camp, away from their parents and primary care providers. If camps aren’t ready to manage the responsibilities of storing and managing those meds, their campers could be at risk. In this episode, Randi Trope, D.O., Vice Chair of Pediatric Quality & Safety, Stony Brook Children's Hospital in New York and a member of the advisory board for the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), and Jen Young, PharmD, BCPS, CSP, a pharmacist and medication safety specialist at ISMP, describe safety tips for camp operators, pharmacists, and families.

To see more camp safety guidance from ISMP, see https://www.consumermedsafety.org; learn more about ISMP’s medication safety work at www.ISMP.org.

The idea of the “five rights” for medication safety has been taught in nursing school since at least World War II, used as a memory tool that nurses should rely on to administer medications safely. Even though no one can identify where the five rights came from, the idea is embedded in medication safety programs and appears frequently in error reports submitted to ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization.

As our guest Susan Paparella, Vice President, Services, Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), points out, the five rights are inadequate as a safety tool. Because they do not address the system-level errors that contribute to medication errors, those errors can occur even when the five rights have been followed. In the latest episode, we discuss more about the shortcomings of the five rights, and better starting points for medication safety programs.

Learn more about ISMP and the ECRI-ISMP Medication Safety memberships.

In this episode, Tim Gibson, Senior Manager, Functional Equivalents, and Andy Poole, Associate Director, Strategy and Innovation, ECRI, describe strategies for enhancing the supply management process in non-acute organizations like nursing homes, ambulatory surgery centers, and physician practices. They describe the importance of building a robust data set and dedicating real staff time to this care-critical activity.

In the latest episode of our podcast, we speak to Karen Garvey, Vice President, Safety and Clinical Risk Management, and J.D. Buchert, Workplace Safety Manager, Parkland Health (Dallas, Texas). They describe their data-driven approach to identifying and combatting workplace violence, including the importance of keeping frontline staff involved in and aware of those efforts.

In this episode, we talk with nurse leaders from Allegheny Health Network (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) about their innovative blended staffing model that encourages LPNs to return to acute care, along with other programs to help bolster staffing, like incentivizing nurses who have left the workforce to return to practice.

Providing equitable care for a diverse population requires providers to meet patients where they are—including if they are experiencing homelessness. In this episode, Dr. Jose Ramos, of Pomona Valley Health Centers, describes his team’s outreach efforts to homeless individuals, how those efforts were affected by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and strategies for implementing similar programs elsewhere.

In this episode, our guest, Emily Transue, MD, MHA, FACP, Medical Director for the Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA), discusses how shared decision-making can be more than a tool to engage patients in their care, and can also help in the fight against care inequities and disparities.

In this episode, we talk with our guest, Tom McCormick, Vice President, Patient Accounting, at Penn Medicine, about adjusting staffing patterns in the patient accounting department during the COVID-19 pandemic. He shares his perspective on how staff roles changed, how the shift to remote work had expected and unexpected effects, and how all of it tied back to providing for patient and staff safety.

In this episode, our guests discuss their data-driven approach to identify and combat disparities and realize their vision of creating a Dallas County with equitable, accessible healthcare for all. Our first guest, Brett Moran, MD, is from Parkland Health & Hospital System, one of the country’s largest and most progressive safety-net hospitals. Our second guest, Steve Miff, PhD, is from Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation, a leading, non-profit, data science, artificial intelligence and innovation organization affiliated with Parkland Health & Hospital System.

In this episode, we're taking another look at shortages in the nursing workforce. Healthcare has faced workforce shortages in the past, and even before the COVID-19 pandemic made things even worse. The American Nurses Association and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast the retirement of more than half a million registered nurses by the end of 2022. Our guests are from the M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing at Villanova University, located just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In this episode, we're talking about ECRI’s number one Top 10 concern for 2022: staffing shortages and the potential dangers to both the patients and the staff. Prior to 2021, there was a growing shortage of both clinical and non-clinical staff, but the problem has grown exponentially. Our guest is Ernest Grant, PhD, RN, FAAN, the 36th President of the American Nurses Association (ANA).

In this episode, we’re talking to our guest from Valleywise Health's Refugee Women's Health Clinic, serving more than 9,000 refugees since 2008 from over 60 countries and is located in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area; specifically, Maricopa County. The Refugee Women's Health Clinic has a long-established infrastructure of community partnership, engagement, and shared community leadership that through collaboration facilitate and coordinate culturally competent care, services, and support.

In this episode, we're talking about wound care biologics—products used to treat all sorts of acute and chronic wounds in hospitals and other care settings. ECRI experts will review what wound care biologics are and some of the challenges that providers face in terms of purchasing and inventory management. Our guests will also discuss strategies to ensure that the right products are available to caregivers at the right time, taking into account some of the challenges that those providers will have in knowing which products will work for which patients.

This episode is part of a series regarding the ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization's (PSO) annual Deep Dive report.

The 2021 Deep Dive report focuses on issues of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare. Research has repeatedly confirmed that members of racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience disparities in care, including having an increased risk of being uninsured or underinsured, lacking access to care, and experiencing worse health outcomes for treatable and preventable conditions.

In this episode, we’re talking to guests from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and the Frazier Family Coalition for Stroke Education and Prevention. They'll discuss an initiative, "Advancing Health Equity and Stroke Prevention through Collaboration," that is being conducted by the Philadelphia Collaborative for Health Equity and the Frazier Stroke Coalition in partnership with Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Temple Hospital. We'll talk about how the collaborative's mission is to leverage health as a catalyst to help Philadelphians reach their full potential by addressing the drivers of health and health outcomes and how these efforts fit into larger programs to fight inequities.

This episode is part of a series regarding the ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization's (PSO) annual Deep Dive report.

The 2021 Deep Dive report focuses on issues of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare. Research has repeatedly confirmed that members of racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience disparities in care, including having an increased risk of being uninsured or underinsured, lacking access to care, and experiencing worse health outcomes for treatable and preventable conditions.

In this episode, we’re talking to guests from Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, serving Camden, New Jersey, residents to improve the lives of people with complex health and social needs. The Camden Coalition also works to help patients across the country through the Coalition's National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs. We'll talk about how the Coalition's mission is to improve care for people with complex health and social needs by implementing person-centered care programs that address not only illness but strive to overcome social barriers to health and enhance wellbeing. 

This episode is part of a series regarding the ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization's (PSO) annual Deep Dive report.

The 2021 Deep Dive report focuses on issues of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare. Research has repeatedly confirmed that members of racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience disparities in care, including having an increased risk of being uninsured or underinsured, lacking access to care, and experiencing worse health outcomes for treatable and preventable conditions.

In this episode, we’re talking to guests from Cooper University Health Care, serving southern New Jersey and Delaware. We discuss outreach around access to the COVID-19 vaccine, how they've worked to overcome those barriers, and how these efforts fit into larger programs to fight inequities.

To learn more about ECRI and the ISMP PSO, or to request a demo, visit https://www.ecri.org/pso.

Today, more than a year into the COVID pandemic, we're talking about the process of disaster recovery. While much has been written over the past year about the ways in which the national and global healthcare systems prepared (or could have prepared) for the pandemic, and should prepare for the next one, not as much attention has been paid to how individual providers and organizations will recover from the past year's trauma.

In this episode, our guest reminds us that challenges like these can also be viewed as opportunities—and we'll discuss how healthcare providers can turn that attitude into action.

To learn more about ECRI’s response to the pandemic, check out the COVID-19 Resource Center.

With access to COVID-19 vaccines now more widespread throughout the United States, but still only available under emergency use authorization, employers are wrestling with questions about whether to mandate that their staff received the vaccine. Perhaps, no industry has a more fraught decisions than Aging Services. There remains a significant gap between vaccination rates among staff and residents, and older adults remain one of the most vulnerable populations to COVID-19.

In today’s episode, we’ll review the current state of COVID vaccinations in Aging Services, talk about strategies for increasing vaccination rates, and discuss some of the unintended consequences of not vaccinating.

To learn more about ECRI’s Aging Services Risk Management, or to request a demo, visit https://www.ecri.org/solutions/aging-risk-management/.