De-freezing frozen patient management.

Objective: To compare the effectiveness of two methods in encouraging the consideration of a leap from one patient management routine to another: (i) real-time review of the facts by an external medical team (ii) implementation of the 're-thinking-protocol' ('de-Freezing') by both treating and external medical teams.

Design: Students accompanied doctors, nurses and patients as non-interrupting observers. When an obvious gap between the expected and actual findings occurred, it was discussed four times: by two teams (treating team, external medical team) in two discussion modes (real-time review, de-Freezing-questionnaire). The students then recorded if a leap was considered for each discussion.

Setting: The study was conducted in the emergency department of the Baruch Padeh Medical Centre, Poriya, Israel.

Participants: All patients were included during times when both medical teams (treating, external) were present.

Intervention(s): During 14 periods of 5-7 h each, 459 patients were sampled. In 183 patients, 200 gaps were discovered.

Results: The external team considered a leap 76 times, compared with 47 by the treating team (P < 0.001). Using the de-Freezing-protocol, the treating team considered a leap 133 times. Interestingly, even the external team benefited from the de-Freezing protocol and considered a leap 140 times (NS compared to the treating team).

Conclusions: While the importance of timely leaping from one patient management routine to another is emphasized in the training of physicians, medical teams too often fail to do so. The de-Freezing-protocol inexpensively encourages the consideration of a leap beyond what is evoked by the involvement of an external team. The protocol is applicable to all medical processes and should be incorporated into medical practice and education.