Tag Archives: philosophy

How To Craft A Clinical Practice Guideline

All US trauma centers verified by the American College of Surgeons are required to have clinical practice guidelines (CPG). Trauma centers around the world generally have them, but may not be required to by their designating authority. But don’t confuse a policy about clinical management, say for head injury, with a real CPG. Policies are generally broad statements about how you (are supposed to) do things, whereas a CPG is a specific set of rules you use when managing a specific patient problem.

  1. Look around; don’t reinvent the wheel! This is the first mistake nearly every center makes. It seems like most want to spend hours and hours combing through the literature, trying to synthesize it and come up with a CPG from scratch. Guess what? Hundreds of other centers have already done this! And many have posted theirs online for all to see and learn from. Take advantage of their generosity. Look at several. Find the one that comes closest to meeting your needs. Then “borrow” it.
  2. Review the newest literature. Any existing CPG should have been created using the most up to date literature at the time. But that could have been several years ago. Look for anything new (and significant) that may require a few tweaks to the existing CPG.
  3. Create your draft, customizing it to your hospital. Doing things exactly the same as another center doesn’t always make sense, and it may not be possible. Tweak the protocols to match your resources and local standards of care. But don’t stray too far off of what the literature tells you is right.
  4. Make sure it is actionable. It should not be a literature summary, or a bunch of wishy-washy statements saying you could do this or consider doing that. Your CPG should spell out exactly what to do and when. (see examples below)
  5. Create a concise flow diagram. The fewer boxes the better. This needs to be easy to follow and simple to understand. It must fit on one page!
  6. Get buy-in from all services involved. Don’t try to implement your CPG by fiat. Use your draft as a launching pad. Let everyone who will be involved with it have their say, and be prepared to make some minor modifications to get buy-in from as many people as possible.
  7. Educate everybody! Start a campaign to explain the rationale and details of your CPG to everyone: physicians, nurses, techs, etc. Give educational presentations. You don’t want the eventual implementation to surprise anyone. Your colleagues don’t like surprises and will be less likely to follow along.
  8. Roll it out. Create processes and a timeline to roll it out. Give everyone several months to get used to it.
  9. Now monitor it! It makes no sense to implement something that no one follows. Create a monitoring system using your PI program. Include it in your reports or dashboards so providers can see how they are doing. And if you really want participation, let providers see how they are doing compared to their colleagues. Everyone wants to be the top dog.

In my next post, I’ll pontificate a bit about guidelines vs protocols, and the difference between evidence-based vs evidence-informed.

Why Create Practice Guidelines?

Practice guidelines are everywhere. More and more organizations have developed processes to create high quality ones. But why should we care? Do they improve what we already do?

Here are my reasons for using practice guidelines:

  • They provide a consistent way of approaching a clinical issue. Everybody working with the patient knows how things will be done, so they don’t have to remember the nuances that particular doctors or providers like.
  • They (hopefully) use the best and most valid scientific data to address the care issue, thus giving trauma professionals the opportunity to provide the best care we know of.
  • They decrease errors and complications by narrowing the number of choices available to providers.
  • They decrease waste for the same reason. For example, drawing blood every 6 hours vs daily for solid organ injuries can add up to three unneeded tests every day.
  • They provide our trainees with one good way to deal with the clinical issue. This is important when they move on to independent practice, and sometimes when taking standardized tests (boards).

Bottom line: If 10 trauma professionals deal with a given clinical problem 10 different ways, then none of them are doing it right! Develop a guideline that all of them can live with, based on current literature (if any). That way they can all be right for once, and our patients will reap the benefits.

In my next post, I’ll describe how to craft a good practice guideline.

If A Tree Falls In A Forest…

It’s time for a little philosophy today. There seem to be two camps in the world of initial diagnostic testing for trauma: selective scanning vs pan-scanning. I admit that I am one of the former. Yes, the more tests you do, the more things you will find, and this will make your radiologist happy. Some of these findings will be red herrings. Some may be true positives, but are they important? Here’s the key question:

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?”

Huh? How does this answer my question? Well, there is a clinical corollary to this question in the field of trauma:

“If an injury exists but no one diagnoses it, does it make a difference (if there would be no change in treatment)?”

Here’s an example. On occasion, my colleagues want to order diagnostic studies that won’t make any clinical difference, in my opinion. A prime example is getting a chest CT after a simple blunt assault. A plain chest xray is routine, and if injuries are seen or the physical exam points to certain diagnoses, appropriate interventions should be taken. But adding a chest CT does not help. Nothing more than the usual pain management, pulmonary toilet, and an occasional chest tube will be needed, and those can be determined without the CT.

Trauma professionals need to realize that we don’t need to know absolutely every diagnosis that a patient has. Ones that need no treatment are of academic interest only, and can lead to accidental injury if we look for them too hard (radiation exposure, contrast reaction, extravasation into soft tissues to name a few). This is how we get started on the path to “defensive medicine.”

Bottom line: Think hard about every test you order. Consider what you are looking for, what you might find, and if it will change your management in any way. If it could, go ahead. But always consider the benefits versus the potential risks, or what I call the “juice to squeeze ratio.”

References:

  • George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1734, section 45.
  • paraphrased by William Fossett, Natural States, 1754.

The Tenth Law Of Trauma

Several years ago, I ran a series of posts on my Laws of Trauma. I assembled them into  newsletter that contained all nine that existed at the time. If you’d like to download it, just click this link.

I’ve  been struck by another pattern, and I think it’s about time to add the tenth law. Weirdly enough, it was inspired by Dancing With The Stars. You’ll see what I mean.

Here is the Tenth Law of Trauma:

“In trauma, it generally takes two to tango”

So what does this mean? When dealing with injury, there are a few broad quantitative categories.

  • Single person mechanism. This is one extreme. Common examples would be the elderly fall, a single vehicle car crash, or a self-inflicted stab or gunshot. There is a single “point of failure” that only the individual involved can manage, but for various reasons they do not or cannot. This law does not apply.
  • Multiple person mechanism. This is the other extreme, and thankfully is not seen very often at all. Examples are a tour bus crash, house explosion, or mass casualty event. Once again, those involved usually have little ability to recognize or avoid the imminent event, and the tenth law is null and void.
  • Two person mechanism. This one is very common, and is exemplified by the two car crash, pedestrian struck, or the various flavors of assault. And this is the one that the tenth law applies to.

When two people are involved in an event that leads to traumatic injury, there is usually (but certainly not always) a set of checks and balances that is present. And frequently there is at least one opportunity to avoid the event.

In the case of a two vehicle crash, one driver may have “gone off the reservation” and ignored the usual traffic laws for whatever reason. But the second driver usually has an opportunity to recognize this and change their behavior in order to avoid the situation. However, if they are distracted, impaired, or making assumptions about how other driver behave they can still get into trouble. Thus, it takes two.

What about the pedestrian struck? Likewise, the driver or the pedestrian may have done something nonstandard. Wear dark clothes at night. Glance at their phone while driving. Look at their passenger a bit too long while having a conversation. Once again, the other participant may have an opportunity to see the result of this unexpected behavior and jump or swerve out of the way.

Interpersonal violence it a bit more tricky. Sure, one of the potential participants may get wind that something is up and try to avoid or defuse the situation. But not always. And this situation is heavily charged with emotion and social pressures and is much more difficult to change or avoid.

Bottom line: Many, but certainly not all,  “two-person” mechanisms of injury are avoidable if both of the individuals involved are mentally present and attentive to their surroundings. Look at your own patient population and see how often this applies. You may be surprised!

What Would You Do? The Elderly Patient With Subdural Hematoma – Final Answer?

I’ve spent the last several posts reviewing the sparse data that we have on the impact of subdural hematoma management in elderly patients. With this information, I had hoped to arrive at some answers as to what to do when certain common patient presentations are encountered.

Unfortunately, the data is not very good, and is structured to raise false hopes. Overall, it looks like about 30-40% of selected patients die in the postoperative period. And the percentage of patients who are discharged at their pre-injury level of independence is in the low single digits. In fairness, one paper did show an improvement from severely disabled to moderately disabled or recovered, although the authors obfuscated how many actually made it to the good recovery group.

The biggest problem with all of the literature we have is that the patients were selected for surgery based on the opinion of the neurosurgeon. This means that many patients who they felt would do poorly with operation were excluded. It is extremely likely that the inclusion of these patients would have dragged down the already poor numbers that were reported. But in fairness, we might have also found a few surprise saves among those patients; I guess we’ll never know.

So let me give you my take on the scenarios that I presented so many days ago. Remember, these are my opinions and are not meant to be gospel. Other trauma professionals will need to interpret the information themselves and make their own decisions.

Scenario 1 – An elderly female falls and sustains a modest subdural hematoma with no shift and a normal exam. Follow your established practice guidelines unless some of the factors in the following scenarios are present.

Scenario 2 – Same as above, but the patient presents 8 hours after the fall. The clock started ticking when the fall occurred. Since your practice guideline recommends monitoring for 6 hours and then a followup CT of the head, the initial CT is the followup scan. The patient could then be discharged if there are no alarming findings on initial CT and the neuro exam is normal.

Scenario 3 – Same as scenario 1 but the patient has advanced dementia. These patients were generally excluded from the studies, and they are not expected to do well. Frankly, they will likely be much worse after an operation and will require an even higher level of post-discharge care (if they make it that far) and more involvement of family. It is critically important that the trauma professionals have a frank talk with the family to make sure they understand the overwhelming likelihood that their loved one will never be as good as they were before the injury. Surviving an operation does not mean going back to their usual living situation. The family absolutely needs this information to make the best choice for their loved one.

Scenario 4 – Same as scenario 1 but the patient has a well documented “do not actively resuscitate” order in place. The patient and their family need the same talk as above so they can appreciate all of the risks and the few, if any, benefits of surgery. Only then can they make an informed if they want to consider temporarily rescinding their DNAR order to allow surgery.

Scenario 5 – Same as scenario 1 but the patient is 95 years old. The data showed that patients in their 80s tended to do even more poorly than younger patients. There were very few nonagenarians in the literature, but it can be expected they would do even worse than the octos. They and their families need the same depressing talk so they can make the right decision.

Bottom line: Communication is key. And good data is even more key, although we have too little of it. For now, all we can do is paint a somewhat depressing picture of generally poor outcomes in highly selected patients. Hopefully we’ll have better data some day and can slice and dice things a little better. This may eventually allow us to offer surgery to those patients who will actually benefit from it the most.