Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS) is an advocacy group dedicated to improving patient health and safety. PPAHS seeks to advance key patient health and safety initiatives that significantly impact patient lives and to do so in a prescriptive and practical manner.
“In my opinion, the solutions lie closer to the bedside. For example, real-time monitoring has benefits beyond simple patient monitoring. For the nurses in our study, the major revelation was that their patients had changed and that they needed to be doing things differently. Continuous electronic monitoring gave them feedback about the effectiveness of their actions on these patients.”
“A misunderstanding on the part of nurses that if a PCA pump is ordered and the patient can receive, for example, half of a milligram of Morphine every hour that the patient cannot develop respiratory depression if the order is followed and the pump is setup correctly. That is certainly not true because of the variables, the other medications, or the way the patient is clearing anesthesia out of her body after surgery. You can still end up with respiratory depression even if the instructions are followed on the pump.”
