2015-2016 Resident Safety Council Teams

Chairs

Jessie Kittle, MD

Co-Chair of Resident Safety Council
Internal Medicine Resident

Ryan Ribeira, MD

Co-Chair of Resident Safety Council
Emergency Medicine Resident

Vice Chairs

Sujatha Seetharaman, MD

Vice Chair of Education
Adolescent Medicine Fellow

Sanaa Suharwardy, MD

Vice Chair of Committees
Obstetrics/Gynecology Resident

Greg Wallingford, MD

Vice Chair of Technology
Emergency Medicine Resident

Nine Teams, One Mission

The Resident Safety Council is comprised of nine task forces, or teams.  Each team is comprised of residents, fellows, and faculty who collaborate across disciplines to solve some of the hardest and most impactful questions in the hospital.  Read about the exciting projects that each task force has undertaken in 2015-2016 below.

Code Blue/RRT Team

Reducing Inappropriate Code Blues

We are conducting a review of Code Blue activations from 2014 to present to determine how frequently Code Blue activations do not meet pre-established Medical Center criteria for Code Blue.  We suspect this fraction is rather high. Inappropriate Code Blue activations distract a large team of providers from caring for other critically ill patients, and potentially placing those patients at risk.  Our goal is to quantify the frequency of inappropriate Code Blue activations and take steps to minimize this occurrence.


Communicating MD Plans Team

Improving Communication of Plans Between Nurses and Physicians

Effective communication between physicians and nurses plays an important role in patient outcomes, job satisfaction, and the overall culture of safety. Both MDs and RNs value face-to-face communication for discussing plans, especially during critical times such as morning rounds, but there exists many logistical barriers.


Consult Processes Team

Standardizing & Streamlining Consulting Processes

The consult process team is a multi-specialty group of residents dedicated to looking at the issues involving specialty consultation throughout the hospital. Across the hospital, consults are not structured or uniform which leads to confusion and dissatisfaction with the consult process.  It is often difficult to reach the correct consultant and routine pages do not always contain all the pertinent information. Our goal is to create a standardized consult page template to be implemented and utilized for inpatient consults.


Discharges Team

Follow-up after hospital discharge is a risky transition of care for patients, and improvements in clinic follow-up, specialty referral, and patient concerns post-discharge need intervention. Our group is actively involved in the new Navigation Center to help address these issues.


Non-Urgent Pages

Reducing Alert Fatigue By Decreasing Non-Urgent Pages

Effective communication between physicians and nurses plays an important role in patient outcomes, job satisfaction, and the overall culture of safety. Both MDs and RNs value face-to-face communication for discussing plans, especially during critical times such as morning rounds, but there exists many logistical barriers.


Order Sets Team

Making Order Sets Clinically Useful

Utilization of order sets can increase standardization and efficiency of patient care, and are underutilized by Emergency Department physicians. Our group aims to revamp and streamline the way order sets are designed and implemented, in order to maximize their benefit in the ED. 


Obtaining Outside Records Team

Streamlining Requests for Outside Records


The current process for obtaining outside medical records is inefficient, haphazard, unreliable, and dangerous for patients. Our goal is to standardize the process of obtaining outside medical records throughout all departments in the hospital, to decrease the amount of time spent by residents to obtain them by at least 75%, to ensure that records are received within 24 hours of a request, and for all records to be organized by support staff.


Patient Satisfaction

Increasing Patient Satisfaction Through Educational Interventions

Patients are often unaware of the structure of academic medical centers (attending, residents, consults) and this leads to confusion and dissatisfaction with their care. We aim to improve patient awareness of the medical team structure. 


Transfer of Care Team

Enhancing OR to ICU Handoffs

Patients destined for the ICU post-op often arrive on the floor without prior notice, which presents a patient safety and workflow problem. Our goal is to elucidate the OR→ICU pathway, and improve the workflow regarding this important transition of care.


Which team are you looking for?