Pulsara Blog

Time is everything in time-sensitive emergencies. But you don’t need us to tell you that. 

You know that time is tissue. You know that every minute counts, and every minute impacts your patient’s outcome. It’s your job: care for the patient, stabilize them, and transport them to the next stage in their care journey as quickly as possible. 

So why does it sometimes feel like the system isn’t built to support that? 

Delays in care happen for many, many reasons, but they all boil down to one thing: communication. 

We have a lot of different communication technologies that do the job they were meant to do: radios, pagers, phones, and fax machines. But they don’t talk to each other. With every middleman a message travels through, it’s another delay for your patient. And when time is of the essence, it’s essential to make sure that the right information gets to the right person at the right time.

Have you ever noticed how challenging it can be to describe what you see to a person not presently with you? You could be witnessing some spectacular spectacle or some terrifying sight, but try as you might to communicate your experience, your words seem weak.

However, send a photo of what you see, and suddenly there's mutual understanding. The image instantly conveys context and meaning. You've heard the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" repeated time and again. Cliché notwithstanding, this phrase continues to ring true in human communications.

What do EMS and hospital care teams have in common with NASCAR drivers?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. The success or failure of both hinges on one thing: time. 

It might surprise even dedicated fans to learn that all of the cars on the track are limited to the same top speed and horsepower range. With this being the case, how can it be that there is such a large disparity between first and last place?

The answer: The race is won and lost during the pit stop.

Emergency Medical Services—EMS, for short—is a branch of healthcare, public health, and public safety that responds to calls for help, 24/7, in almost every community in our nation. EMS encompasses a number of different services and roles, providing vital lifesaving care for patients during times of emergency. There are around 1.05 million licensed EMS professionals across the U.S. and nearly 623,000 of these are EMTs, while over 268,000 are paramedics. 

Over the past five years, Brunei's number of stroke cases have increased by 57%, making stroke the country's fourth-highest cause of death—and the main cause of disabilities. Now, a study conducted over the past two years found that the average age of stroke patients in Brunei is decreasing.

Are you using old, non-patient-centric communication technologies like pagers or phone calls (or even WhatsApp) to solve present-day healthcare challenges? Do you ever wonder if there's a better way to connect your care teams? 

At the European Resuscitation Council Virtual Congress on Oct. 24, 2020, Greg Brown, RN, Pulsara's Western Regional Sales Manager, hosted an exclusive webinar exploring just that. In "Patient-Centric Emergency Medicine: Why Mobile Team Communication Across Healthcare Organizations is the New Standard," Greg discusses how to improve acute care team communication and patient outcomes by switching to mobile technology — and why it is imperative to inter-organizational success.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Greg Brown, MN, RN, for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. 

Emergencies don't slow down for nights and weekends. What can we do to improve outcomes for patients admitted during off hours? 

If you’ve ever done long shift work in the hospital setting, you know how taxing it can be. Being on for a long stretch is both mentally and physically exhausting. When that work falls on off hours, those stressors are magnified. Working nights and weekends adds an immense layer of complexity to already high-risk situations. Emergencies don’t slow down after hours. STEMIs, traumas, and codes all arrive during the night, just the same as during the day; but with less staff present and fewer resources, you also have to deal with calling in all the necessary members of the care team. 

A new study shows that every 15-minute decrease in door-to-needle time is linked to lower all-cause mortality. How can we work to reduce door-to-needle times?

When a neurologist utters the phrase "time is brain," the implication is that every minute counts in treating each stroke patient. A recent study is further confirming what stroke teams have known since 1993: efficient treatment is everything to better outcomes in stroke care. 

Have you ever had to coordinate care for a really sick patient that needed an immediate transfer or consult, and had to divert your attention away from the patient in order to get in touch with all the necessary team members? Have you ever been frustrated by just how much time and runaround it takes to get everyone on the same page? 

Physical distance is part of the package when you’re trying to coordinate care for patients. Whether you’re down the hallway or miles apart, getting the right information to the right people at the right time can be a challenge. That’s why having clear, established lines of communication is vital to successfully coordinating patient care.

Of all the various crises facing healthcare in 2020, there is one underlying root issue that directly affects all of them. It determines everything about every single patient's care journey, from each care decision to every patient outcome. 

However, very few healthcare professionals think to start with this issue in improving patient outcomes. 

What's the issue? 

Communication. 

As the world buckled under the weight of COVID-19, emergency protocols were put in place to protect as many people as possible from exposure to the virus. Many of these protocols successfully achieved what they were designed to do. However, there were also many ways in which we didn’t yet fully understand the impacts of our pandemic response protocols.

Australian EMS agency Ambulance Victoria has recently released new research on the specific causes behind one such unintended consequence: increased deaths from sudden cardiac arrest.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to today's guest blogger, Reid Kiser* 

--

It’s probably safe to say that we have all established goals – for ourselves or others – at some point in our lives. In follow-up to last week’s blog, I’d like to focus on goals related to improving the quality of healthcare. This has been a major focus for the industry over the past few decades. And most recently, the concept of value-based healthcare has taken root, whereby organizations are increasingly mindful of inefficiencies and waste.

But, where does one begin with establishing goals for improving quality? How does one know where efficiencies can be gained? Wait, there’s waste in our healthcare system? It’s hard to believe, considering the numbers of patients who can’t obtain the care they need to begin with.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Jessie Senini for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

It’s almost a guarantee these days …

As I aimlessly wander around a store checking window shopping for things I don’t need, I overhear other people around me uttering under their breath, “Does this spark joy?”

Now if you have no idea where that expression comes from, then you need to get yourself caught up on the Art of KonMari AKA the Tidying Up craze that is sweeping the world!

For someone as obsessively tidy and clean as myself, seeing others discover the oh-so-lovely principles of a decluttered life … well it’s like finally getting to scratch an unbelievable itch. Marie Kondo — an organizing guru — has worked her way into the homes of millions of people, sparking a wave of organizing and decluttering that is literally changing people's lives.

And I love it! (As do a number of our own OCD Pulsara team members. Check our our CMO’s sock and t-shirt drawers!) 

So what on Earth does this have to do with Pulsara?