10 Things That Will Get You Sued – Part 2

July 2, 2024 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

#3. You are responsible for the conduct of your staff

If the people who work for you treat patients poorly, you may be responsible. It is important that your staff have bedside manner at least as good as yours.

#4. Avoiding your patients

Some of your patients may need to contact you, either while in the hospital or while at home. Don’t appear to be inaccessible. This is an extension of your bedside manner. Return phone calls or messages promptly, or have one of your staff do so. Make time to meet with patient families while in the hospital. Remember, you deal with trauma all the time; this is probably the first time they have and it is extremely stressful.

#5. Ordering a test without checking the result

I presume that if you order a test, you are interested in the result. And hopefully it will make some difference in patient care. If not, don’t order it. But if you do order a test, always check the result. If a critical result is found, don’t assume that “someone” will tell you about it. You are responsible for checking it and dealing with any subsequent orders or followup that is needed.

#6. “What we have here is a failure to communicate” – part 2

Most of the time, our patients have primary care providers somewhere. Make it a point to identify them and keep them in the loop. Provide, at a minimum, a copy of the discharge summary from the hospital or emergency department. If new therapies of any kind are started, make sure they are aware. And if an “incidentaloma” is found (a new medical condition found on lab tests or imaging studies), followup with the primary care provider to make sure that they are aware of it so they can take over responsibility for further diagnosis or treatment.

Tune in Friday for the final installment in my next post.

General

10 Things That Will Get You Sued – Part 1

June 28, 2024 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

Many trauma professionals believe that they can only be sued if they make a medical error and some harm occurs. Unfortunately, this is not entirely true. Yes, this is one obvious way to spark a suit or claim.

Unfortunately, it goes beyond that. Your patient may sue you if they even believe that they were harmed in some way, or think that something untoward happened while you were providing care. Here are the top 10 reasons for getting sued and my thoughts on each (in no particular order).

#1. “What we have here is a failure to communicate”

Your interpersonal skills are at least as important as your clinical skills! You may be a clinical prodigy, but if you are an asshole at the bedside, your patients will never appreciate your skills. You must be able to listen and empathize with your patient. Sit down, look at them eye to eye. Listen attentively. Don’t appear to be in a rush to get out of the room. You’d be surprised at how much more valuable information you will get and the relationship you create.

#2. “Work not documented is work not done”

This is my quote and it’s one of my favorites. Accurate, complete, timely, and legible documentation is a must! The legibility problem is fading with the widespread use of electronic health records (EHR, although this is creating new problems). Documentation, or lack thereof, will not get you sued. However, if you are involved in a suit or claim and your care is scrutinized, poor or missing documentation will make it impossible to plausibly contend that you did what you say you did.

It’s critical that you document every encounter thoroughly enough to be able to reconstruct what you were thinking and what you did. And providing a date and time is absolutely critical. This is especially important when the EHR timestamps everything you enter. Frequently, you will be documenting something somewhat after the fact. Always make sure that it’s not too far after the fact. Document as promptly as you can, and include the time that you were actually providing the service.

And never go back and try to “correct” your documentation, especially if the chart is being requested for inclusion in a suit or claim. If you believe there is an error, create an addendum and explain why the correction is necessary. If a suit or claim has been started, do not touch or open the chart without advice from your legal counsel.

Tune in for Part 2 in my next post!

Complications

Why Do Trauma Patients Get Readmitted?

June 25, 2024 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

Readmission of any patient to the hospital is considered a quality indicator. Was the patient discharged too soon for some reason? Were there any missed or undertreated injuries? Information from the Medicare system in the US (remember, this represents an older age group than the usual trauma patient) indicates that 18% of patients are readmitted and 13% of these are potentially preventable.

A non-academic Level II trauma center in Indiana retrospectively reviewed their admissions and readmissions over a 3 year period and excluded patients who were readmitted on a planned basis (surgery), with a new injury, and those who died. This left about 5,000 patients for review. Of those, 98 were identified as unexpected readmissions.

There were 6 major causes for readmission:

Wound (23) – cellulitis, abscess, thrombophlebitis. Two thirds required surgery, and 4 required amputation. All of these amputations were lower extremity procedures in obese or morbidly obese patients.
Abdominal (16) – ileus, missed injury, abscess. Five required a non-invasive procedure (mainly endoscopy). Only 2 required OR, and both were splenectomy for spleen infarction after angioembolization.
Pulmonary (7) – pneumonia, empyema, pneumothorax, effusion. Two patients required an invasive procedure (decortication, tube placement).
Thromboembolic (4) – DVT and PE. Two patients were admitted with DVT, 2 with PE, and 1 needed surgery for a bleed due to anticoagulation.
CNS (21) – mental status or peripheral neuro exam change. Eight had subdural hematomas that required drainage; 3 had spine fractures that failed nonoperative management.
Hematoma (5) – enlargement of a pre-existing hematoma. Two required surgical drainage.

About 14% of readmissions were considered to be non-preventable by a single senior surgeon. Wound complications had the highest preventability and CNS changes the lowest. Half occurred prior to the first followup visit, which was typically scheduled 2-3 weeks after discharge. This prompted the authors to change their routine followup to 7 days.

Bottom line: This retrospective study suffers from the usual weaknesses. However, it is an interesting glimpse into a practice with fewer than the usual number patients lost to followup. The readmission rate was 2%, which is pretty good. One in 7 were considered “preventable.” Wounds and pulmonary problems were the biggest contributors. I recommend that wound and pulmonary status be thoroughly assessed prior to discharge to bring this number down further. Personally, I would not change the routine followup date to 1 week, because most patients have far more complaints that are of little clinical importance than compared to 2 weeks after discharge.

Reference: Readmission of trauma patients in a nonacademic Level II trauma center. J Trauma 72(2):531-536, 2012.

Philosophy

The VIP Syndrome In Healthcare (Very Important Person)

June 21, 2024 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

The VIP syndrome occurs in healthcare when a celebrity or other well-connected “important” person receives a level of care that the average person does not. This situation was first documented in a paper published in the 1960s, which noted that VIP patients have worse outcomes.

Who is a VIP? It may be a celebrity. A family member. Or even a colleague. Or the President of the United States. VIPs (or their healthcare providers) may expect to get special access to care and that the care will be of higher quality than that provided to others. Healthcare providers often grant this extra access through returned phone calls and preferential access to their clinic or office. The provider tries to provide a higher quality of care by ordering additional tests and involving more consultants. This idea ignores the fact that we already provide the best care we know how, and money or fame can’t buy any better.

Unfortunately, trying to provide better care sets up the VIP for a higher complication rate and a greater chance of death. Healthcare consists of several intertwined systems that generally have found their most efficient processes and lowest complication rates. Any disturbance in this equilibrium of tests, consultants, or nursing care moves this equilibrium away from its safety point.

Every test has its own set of possible complications. Each consultant feels compelled to add something to the evaluation, which usually means even more tests and more potential complications. Once too many consultants are involved, there is no “captain of the ship,” and care can become fragmented, even more inefficient, and dangerous.

How do we avoid the VIP Syndrome? First, explain these facts to the VIPs, making sure to impress upon them that requesting or receiving ” different ” care may be dangerous to their health. Explain the same things to all providers who will be involved in their care. Finally, do not stray from how you “normally” do things. Order the same tests you usually would, use the same consultants, and take control of all of their recommendations, trying to do things your usual way. This will provide the VIP with the best care possible, which is actually the same as what everybody else gets.

References:

“The VIP Syndrome”: A Clinical Study in Hospital Psychiatry. Weintraub, Journal of Mental and Nervous Disease, 138(2): 181-193, 1964.
Caring for VIPs: nine principles. Cleve Clin J Med. 2011 Feb;78(2):90-4. doi: 10.3949/ccjm.78a.10113. PMID: 21285340.

Resuscitation

MTP Activation Criteria For Pediatric Patients

June 18, 2024 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

Early resuscitation, particularly with blood products in patients with hemorrhage, is literally a lifesaver. As each minute ticks by, survival slowly diminishes. To facilitate this, massive transfusion protocols (MTP) have been designed to rapidly deliver sizable quantities of blood products to the trauma resuscitation bay.

One of the recurring issues I see at trauma centers is the lack of a reliable way of activating the MTP. Many centers publish what I consider “psychic criteria.” These promote criteria that involve the amount of blood loss over four or twenty-four hours. Who even knows?

Delays in activating the MTP frequently occur because no one thinks about it when a critically injured patient arrives. All of the trauma professionals are busy with the patient and are rudely surprised when they ask for the first unit of blood.

Objective MTP activation criteria have been developed and are well-supported by the literature. The ABC score and the shock index are two of the more common methods. Both are based on observations made upon patient arrival (and possibly before if a prehospital report is received).

The ABC score uses four criteria:

Heart rate > 120
Systolic blood pressure < 90
FAST positive
Penetrating mechanism

If any two of these are present, there is a 50% chance that massive transfusion is warranted.

The Shock Index (SI) uses the initial vital signs to perform a quick and dirty calculation by dividing the heart rate by the systolic blood pressure. A score greater than or equal to one predicts at least a 2x higher need for blood. Of the two, SI is more easily calculated and gives a marginally more accurate result.

But what about children? The ABC score was evaluated in pediatric patients and was found to be much less sensitive than in adults. Combining the ABC score with an age-adjusted Shock Index improved the accuracy only slightly. This was named the ABC-S score.

Several adult and pediatric trauma centers in the Denver area collaborated to test a new score using the ABC-S score in combination with serum lactate and base deficit. This was termed the ABC-D score. Clever.

Here are the factoids:

A retrospective review of patients aged 1-18 from a single trauma registry who had received a blood transfusion during their initial care
The study included 211 children, of whom 66 required massive transfusion
The three methods listed above were compared, and the ABC-D score was found to be the most predictive of MTP
ABC-D was 77% sensitive and 79% specific
The authors showed that the accuracy and balance between sensitivity and specificity improved for each point increase in the ABC-D score.
They concluded that ABC-D may be a useful tool to expedite the delivery of blood products during a trauma resuscitation.

Bottom line: Hmm. The system that they developed and the analysis of their experience appears to be sound. But unfortunately, it fails the practicality test. Here’s the sticking point. How long does it take to obtain that initial blood specimen, send it to your lab, and then return stat results to your trauma bay? Once you receive the results, you then activate the MTP and wait another 5-10 minutes for the first cooler to arrive!

That’s an awful long time to wait for blood while you watch a child hemorrhaging in front of you. So what to do? For now, use one of the existing systems to make a rapid decision. And always err on the side of activation. You can always send the blood back if you don’t need it!

Reference: The ABC-D score improves the sensitivity in predicting need for massive transfusion in pediatric trauma patients. J Pediatr Surg. 2020 Feb;55(2):331-334. doi: 10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2019.10.008. Epub 2019 Nov 1. PMID: 31718872.

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