The researchers are from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-funded Center of Excellence for Pediatric Quality Measurement at Boston Children’s Hospital.
In a study published in Pediatrics, the researchers field-tested the trigger tool at 16 academic and community hospitals in the United States. Nurses, physicians, and in some cases, outside experts, reviewed 3,814 medical records to determine how well each of the triggers worked at identifying suspected adverse events.
Here are four points:
1. The GAPPS trigger tool flags triggers in a patient’s medical record that alert medical professionals that an adverse event might have occurred.
2. After testing, the tool included 27 manual triggers and 30 automated triggers.
3. The finalized trigger list after the study included only triggers that identified adverse events in at least 10 percent of instances.
4. The researchers state using a trigger tool to retrospectively identify adverse events can allow hospitals to track overall harms and specific harms over time, as well as to learn from past incidents and assess patient safety efforts.
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