Safety in Pregnancy Care

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture notes on Safety in Pregnancy Care, including teamwork, communication, risk management, and patient safety strategies.

Patient Safety

The prevention of harm to patients through teamwork, communication, and system improvement.

Standardization

A key patient-safety element that can reduce variation in practice and duplication of time and resources and provide reliability of patient care procedures.

Patient-Safety Bundles

Improvement strategies implemented in California that have contributed to decreased maternal mortality rates.

SBAR

A communication technique to convey critical information, standing for Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation.

Call-Outs

A strategy used to inform all team members quickly when new critical events occur, particularly during an emergency.

Closed-Loop Communication

When the individual receiving a message confirms or repeats back what they have heard from the individual sending the message, to ensure clarity and accountability.

Shared Mental Model

Allows a team to have a shared understanding of the care plan; compromised teamwork and patient safety can result without it.

Two-Challenge Rule

Allows a team member to clearly articulate a concern regarding a perceived or real patient safety breach.

CUS Words

A communication strategy in which every individual in a care unit is trained to listen when specific words are spoken: "I'm Concerned", "I'm Uncomfortable", "This is a Safety issue”.

Briefings

Held before any patient care episode to allow team members to review risk factors, designate roles, and ensure that everyone has a shared mental model regarding how to proceed.

Huddles

Brief gatherings of care team members to discuss patient status and the management plan when issues arise during patient care.

Debriefings

Allow team members to learn from patient care episodes, regardless of the outcome.

Sentinel Event

A patient safety event that reaches a patient and results in death, permanent harm, or severe temporary harm.

Fatigue Mitigation

Review the I'M SAFE (Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol and Drugs, Fatigue, Eating and Elimination) checklist to ensure they are fit for work.

Health Information Technology (IT)

Can be a valuable patient-safety tool by facilitating provider communication, tracking and reporting data, providing point-of-care reading material, promoting adherence to practice guidelines, and increasing patient engagement.

OB Readiness

Preparedness to provide antenatal, intrapartum, and postpartum services for normal and complicated deliveries in areas with fewer resources than a Level 1 facility.

Council on Patient Safety in Women's Health Care

A joint multidisciplinary collaboration of national health care organizations that has developed patient-safety bundles with a 4-R structure: Readiness, Recognition and prevention, Response, and Reporting/systems learning.

Risk Management

Malpractice claims are not sensitively or specifically identified by these strategies. Newer strategies focus on root cause analysis to prevent future adverse outcomes.

The Five C's of Risk Management

Compassion, Communication, Competence, Charting, and Confession