Ensuring Rapid Response Team Care Aligns With Patients' Limitations of Medical Therapy: A Quality Improvement Project.

Background: Rapid response teams (RRTs) are designed to improve patient care during deterioration in clinical condition.

Local Problem: Patients' desired limitations of medical therapy (LOMTs) were not documented or communicated to the RRT, and patients received care not aligned with their wishes.

Methods: A multidisciplinary team developed a process for improving documentation, communication of LOMTs, and care delivery on 3 medical cardiology units.

Fibrin-modulating nanogels for treatment of disseminated intravascular coagulation.

Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) is a pathological coagulopathy associated with infection that increases mortality. In DIC, excessive thrombin generation causes symptoms from formation of microthrombi to multiorgan failure; bleeding risks can also be a concern because of clotting factor consumption. Different clinical events lead to DIC, including sepsis, trauma, and shock.

Nursing Professional Development Specialist's Role in Adapting Education, Onboarding, and Just-in-Time Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted every aspect of the personal and professional lives of healthcare providers. Nursing professional development practitioners are challenged with ongoing classroom education, new hire onboarding, and just-in-time education for staff. This article is intended to present the unique challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic placed on nursing professional development practitioners in a large academic medical center and how opportunities presented to revise old education practices.

An Activity-Based Nanosensor for Traumatic Brain Injury.

Currently, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is detected by medical imaging; however, medical imaging requires expensive capital equipment, is time- and resource-intensive, and is poor at predicting patient prognosis. To date, direct measurement of elevated protease activity has yet to be utilized to detect TBI. In this work, we engineered an activity-based nanosensor for TBI (TBI-ABN) that responds to increased protease activity initiated after brain injury.

Quality-improvement analytics for intravenous infusion pumps.

Purpose: The implementation of a smart-pump continuous quality-improvement (CQI) program across a large health system is described, with an emphasis on key metrics for outcomes analyses and program refinement.

Summary: Three years ago, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center health system launched a CQI initiative to help ensure the safe use of 6000 smart pumps in its 14 inpatient facilities. A centralized team led by pharmacists is responsible for the retrieval and interpretation of smart-pump data, which is continuously transmitted to a main server.