Anesthesia teams can leverage emergency manuals for patient safety: 3 takeaways

Emergency checklists and manuals can improve safety in the operating room, according to a recent industry and market news alert by Anesthesia Business Consultants CEO and President Tony Mira.

These reminders work as cognitive aids, to ensure appropriate steps are followed in potentially chaotic emergency situations; Mr. Mira notes that these emergency manuals can be helpful for all anesthesia providers, including anesthesiologists, certified registered nurse anesthetists and other clinicians.

Here's what you need to know:

1. Sara Goldhaber-Fiebert, MD, of Stanford University in California, spoke on best practices to establish these guidelines at the American Society of Anesthesiologists' Anesthesiology 2016 meeting. She suggests convening a multidisciplinary committee of anesthesiologists, CRNAs, surgical nurses, surgeons, technicians and pharmacists to build a customized manual.

2. It's important for every emergency manual to be customized to each individual healthcare facility, to ensure it includes the organization's common terminology and local emergency phone numbers.

3. Once the emergency manual is established, successful medical teams can determine a "reader" for each operation. The reader may be an additional anesthesiologist, nurse or medical student who is not occupied in the operating room; this extra clinician will read the contents of the checklist in the event of an emergency.

"The key to successful implementation is a culture that embraces cognitive aids not as a sign of clinical incompetence, but as a tool to improve care," according to the news alert.

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