Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSHospital death rates linked to poor training
Hospital death rates are more to do with poorly-trained medical staff than complications from major surgery, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A report from the University of Michigan says that it is the ability of doctors to “rescue” patients from life-threatening events that makes the difference.
This is particularly the case with complications that are common after major surgery, such as wound infections, pneumonia, kidney failure, blood clots and strokes.
According to study author Professor John Birkmeyer, the chance of dying of a serious complication is doubled if skilled and competent post-operative care is lacking.
He says: “Early recognition of a potential problem is crucial, and may be related to the quality and quantity of nursing staff and relationships among team members - for example, whether nurses are afraid to call the doctor at night.”
He reports that death rates vary from 3.5% to 6.9% despite similar numbers of serious complications. At low-mortality hospitals, 12.5% of patients died from complications compared with 21.4% at high-mortality hospitals.
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Readers' comments (4)
SUSAN CLAY | 2-Oct-2009 7:04 am
THIS IS WHERE THE EXPERIENCED NURSE CAN BE INVALUABLE, AND THEIR CONCERNS REGARDING A PATIENTS HEALTH STATUS SHOULD BE LISTENED TO.
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Anonymous | 2-Oct-2009 1:44 pm
The patient comes first no matter what time of the day it is, we (health care professionals) ARE IN THIS LINE OF WORK BECAUSE WE CARE ABOUT OUR PATIENT'S HEALTH , RIGHT? We as nurses need to be very perceptive on the job because we are ususually with the patients the most and need to be able to detect the beginning of a possible health crisis.
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Ezesomaga Ejimogu | 2-Oct-2009 3:15 pm
Once again the nurses take the blame.
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deborah danitsch | 2-Oct-2009 3:43 pm
there are many situations now where nurses are the first point of contact for sick patients. how does this affect the mortality rates? are these nurses not guiding the junior doctors?
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