Expert Urges Quality Checklists
April 5, 2010
Checklists and empowering nursing staffs to enforce their use can have a dramatic positive effect in reducing blood stream infections contracted in intensive care units (ICUs), according to a new book from a clinician at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Peter J. Pronovost, MD, notes that a checklist program involving 70 ICUs in Michigan has resulted in infection rates "near zero." In a March 9th interview with The New York Times, Pronovost cites a federal estimate that 31,000 people die each year from blood stream infections associated with catheter insertion following surgery, treatment in an ICU, for chemotherapy and for dialysis. Checklists address such issues as hand washing, skin cleaning, avoiding placing catheters in the groin, and keeping sterile fields. Pronovost is medical director of the Quality and Safety Research Group at Hopkins. His book is: Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor's Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out.