Underscoring the importance of the infection rate information released by the CDC, the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists (SCA) Foundation today announced that the FOCUS Cardiac Surgery Patient Safety Initiative will develop, test and validate tools to eliminate infections in cardiac surgery patients, particularly catheter-related infections.
FOCUS (Flawless Operative Cardiovascular Unified Systems), a rigorous study of human error in the cardiovascular operating rooms, is a collaborative effort of the SCA, the SCA Foundation and the Johns Hopkins University Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG) led by Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD.
In addition to anesthetists, the FOCUS initiative includes surgeons, perioperative nurses and perfusionists. Prospective observations by trained human factors engineers at five cardiac surgery sites identified hundreds of potential patient hazards that the observed team members did not recognize. Dr. Elizabeth Martinez, QSRG investigator, recently reported that these hazards included significant but unrecognized breaks in sterile procedures, including inadequate surgical skin prep and improper techniques for central line placement. “These observations demonstrate that even highly motivated and well trained surgical teams do not recognize the latent hazards in their own practices,” stated Martinez. “The FOCUS assessment and intervention tools can be used by teams to identify and correct these hazards.”
