Poster winners impress with collaborative projects
Each year during Patient Safety and Quality Week, interdisciplinary teams from throughout UF Health showcase their ongoing collaborative projects focused on improving important aspects of patient safety and quality. More than 60 posters were presented this spring and faculty, staff and students learned more about how we’re improving in these vital areas.
First place
Improving the management of STEMI: Multidisciplinary protocol to decrease inappropriate STEMI alert activation from the emergency department
Team: Grant Simpson; Jordan Mullings; Connor Bracy; Carla Schmidt, R.N.; David Winchester, M.D; Thomas Payton, M.D.; Adrian Tyndall, M.D.; Mohammad Massoomi, M.D.; Alicia McCullers, D.N.P.; Brandon Allen, M.D.
The team sought to address the problem of false-positive STEMI alert activations to decrease intensive resource utilization, decrease the financial burden to the hospital and improve patient care and health outcomes through the implementation of standardized protocols. The group’s findings demonstrated the effectiveness of integration and that the protocols improved patient care and health outcomes.
Second place
Evaluation of a PCR-based gastrointestinal panel at UF Health Shands Hospital
Team: Elizabeth E. Tremblay, M.P.H., C.I.C.; Kenneth H. Rand, M.D.; Stacy G. Beal, M.D.
The team aimed to determine the clinical impact of a new comprehensive molecular test, the FilmArray® Gastrointestinal, or GI, panel that tests for nearly all known agents of infectious diarrhea in approximately one hour. It is hypothesized that using the GI panel results in more cost-effective care and improved resource stewardship through a shorter length of stay and a decreased need for other, more invasive and expensive tests such as abdominal imaging studies. They concluded that the GI panel can provide a statistically significant improvement in quality care and delivery efficiency and an increase in value per health care dollar.
Third place
Hand hygiene compliance pilot project utilizing a point of care reminder system
Team: Irene Alexaitis, D.N.P., R.N., NEA-BC; Nicole Iovine, M.D., Ph.D.; Scott Brown, R.N., C.I.C.; Janet Gerner, R.N.; Mia Belleville, R.N., B.C.; Kelly Jacobitz, R.N., B.C.; Victoria Holley, R.N., B.C.; Tiffany N. Rouillier, R.N., CCRN; Jamie Dees, R.N., C.N.L.; Joshua Kramer, M.D.
The team evaluated four automated systems for capturing opportunities for increasing hand hygiene compliance and decreasing infections on pilot units. UF Health Shands Hospital 64 Medicine Unit and UF Health Shands Cancer Hospital 7 West Unit were chosen, as one consists of semiprivate rooms in the UF Health Shands Hospital and one consists of private rooms in the UF Health Shands Cancer Hospital. Both units had hand hygiene compliance greater than 95 percent for the five-month pilot from Biovigil data reports with a goal of decreasing Clostridium difficile infections by 5 percent by the end of the pilot. The team found the infection rates did not fall as expected related to low numbers of Clostridium difficile infections. However, hand hygiene compliance did increase.