Patient Safety Update
Communicating Critical Test Results
BWH staff nurses play a vital role in ensuring communication of critical test results to providers in a timely manner.
Since April, nursing staff have been documenting the communication of critical or abnormal test results on a new sticker that is filed in the progress note section of the patients’ chart. The Critical / Abnormal test result sticker contains the date and time test results were received by the inpatient unit from the lab, the results themselves and the time the results were relayed to a physician, physician assistant or nurse practitioner and confirmed. See unit NPSG manual for more information.
This procedural change was necessary to comply with standards put in place this year by the Joint Commission which required the hospital to track the time between test results reaching the inpatient unit and being confirmed by a physician, PA or NP, who could then act upon them. Early audits of patient records to assess compliance with the process change have been positive, said Alexander Ferraro, the CCE’s patient safety project manager.
“This change is about delivering the safest care to the patient,” said Diane Lancaster, PhD, RN, director, Quality Measurement and Improvement in the Department of Nursing. “And the nurses’ role is crucial to this process.”
The sticker process is an interim solution. Clinical Laboratory, Information Systems, CCE and Quality staff are working to develop an automated computer application so that this data can eventually be captured electronically.