News
UMCB ED Beats National Standards 100 Percent of the Time
The classic picture of an acute heart attack is a middle-age male clutching the middle of his chest, reporting pain down the left arm, sweating and short of breath. That part is easy.
But a female patient complaining of stomach pain, a patient reporting severe jaw pain, a young patient reporting of shoulder pain, the chest pain victim of an auto accident caused by the pain of a heart attack – these symptoms are not as easy to associate with an acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack (AMI).
It takes a high level of awareness and split-second decision-making on the part of triage nurses to recognize and act on possible heart attacks. If suspected, they must immediately perform an EKG. If the test indicates an AMI, they must immediately call the doctors and an interventional cardiologist. The patient is then taken to the Cath Lab to assist with a definitive procedure called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), which restores circulation of blood to heart muscle.
Nurse leaders from the UMCB ED and Cardiac Cath Lab have worked together to create a failsafe process to recognize and reduce time to PCI.
Imagine all of this happening each time a patient needs it, with the right intervention being done the right way on time. In all of 2010, the UMCB ED staff appropriately intervened in less than 90 minutes, with performance ranking above the national standard 100 percent of the time.