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Implementing evidence-based treatment plans: one health system's experience to standardize order sets.

Article Excerpt
Would you fly if one commercial flight a day crashed? What if 1 in 10, or even 1 in 20 seats did not have a seat belt? Would you be willing to sit in at seat? Wachter and Shojania's (2004) headline of the article, "The Equivalent of a Jumbo Jet Crashing Everyday," was used to report on the Institute of Medicine's 1999 report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System.

Pediatric caregivers have bravely stepped forward in the development of patient safety programs, especially since the death of 18-month-old Josie King in 2001. According to her mother, Sorrell King, Josie died from dehydration and an overdose of narcotics at Johns Hopkins Children's Center on the day before she was expected to be discharged home. The King family and Johns Hopkins Children's Center created the Josie King Patient Safety Program. This collaborative effort between a patient's family and the health care professional was the first of its kind and has paved the way for significant changes in pediatric patient safety (The Josie King Foundation at BCF, 2008).

Although gains have been made in promoting patient safety, after almost 10 years, resistance to fundamental changes in work flow that would reduce many needless errors continues. Evidence-based practice is one proven strategy that reduces medical errors by promoting adherence to a professionally recognized treatment plan. Evidence-based order sets can particularly change disastrous outcomes of errors. This article presents one health care system's case examples for consideration.

Need for Evidence-Based Treatment Plans

At our health system, the need for evidence-based medical treatment plans was addressed by working toward the implementation of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) by...

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