Promoting Patient Safety: The Rapid Medical Response Team

Promoting patient safety: the rapid medical response team.

CONTEXT Adverse events are estimated to affect up to 17% of hospitalized patients and to cause up to 98,000 patient deaths per year in the United States. Unexpected codes in hospitalized patients are one of the most significant adverse events, carrying a risk of death that is reported to range from 50% to 80%. OBJECTIVE The Rapid Medical Response Team (RMRT) was an initiative designed to redu...

Medical emergency teams and rapid response triggers - the ongoing quest for the 'perfect' patient safety system

Page 1 of 1 (page number not for citation purposes) We read with interest the article by Iyengar and colleagues [1] on the impact of standardized implementation of medical emergency teams (METs) for the early identification and management of acutely deteriorating patients on the ward. The vast majority (88%) of all preventable adverse events were classified as ‘therapeutic errors’. The authors ...

Promoting patient safety and preventing medical error in emergency departments.

An estimated 108,000 people die each year from potentially preventable iatrogenic injury. One in 50 hospitalized patients experiences a preventable adverse event. Up to 3% of these injuries and events take place in emergency departments. With long and detailed training, morbidity and mortality conferences, and an emphasis on practitioner responsibility, medicine has traditionally faced the chal...

Patient Safety and Team Training

In 2000, the publication of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health Care System was a seminal event for the health care system in the United States.1 Prior to the publication of this report, many physicians and hospital administrators refused to acknowledge the frequent occurrence of preventable morbidity and mortality and the sad reality that our health ...

Promoting Patient Safety (Acrobat PDF)