Abstract
Pediatric trauma is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in children in the USA. Several clinical teams converge to support trauma care in the Emergency Department (ED); the most severe trauma cases often need surgery in the operating room (OR) and/or are admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). These care transitions can result in loss of information or transfer of incorrect information, We interviewed 18 clinicians about communication and coordination during care transitions between the ED, OR and PICU. Clinicians completed a short questionnaire about patient safety during transitions. Results show that, although many services and units involved in pediatric trauma work well together, important patient care information may be lost in the transitions. To safely manage transitions of this fragile, unstable, complex population, we need to better manage the information flow during these transitions.
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Acknowledgements
Funding for this research was provided by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) [Grant No. R01 HS023837]. The project described was supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), [Grant UL1TR002373]. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies. We thank the study participants, as our research would not be possible without them.
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Hoonakker, P. et al. (2019). Things Falling Through the Cracks: Information Loss During Pediatric Trauma Care Transitions. In: Bagnara, S., Tartaglia, R., Albolino, S., Alexander, T., Fujita, Y. (eds) Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018). IEA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 818. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96098-2_60
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