Conectar
Homecare is a critical component of the ongoing restructuring of healthcare worldwide, given the shift from institution- to home-based care. The homecare evidence base still contains significant gaps: There is a lack of knowledge regarding quality and safety work and interventions. This study explores how home healthcare professionals perceive and use the concept of risk to guide them in providing high-quality healthcare while maintaining resilience.
The study design is a qualitative multiple case study. The phenomena explored were risk perception, sensemaking and adaptations of care delivered to patients in their homes. Inductive content analysis was conducted.
The study was conducted in three Norwegian municipalities. Each municipality was defined as a single case.
Interviews with healthcare professionals were performed both individually and in focus groups of three to five persons. 19 interviews with 35 informants were conducted: 11 individual semistructured interviews and 8 focus groups.
Four themes were identified: ‘professionalism is constantly prioritising and aligning care based on here-and-now observations’ ‘teamwork feels safe and enhances quality’ ‘taking responsibility for system risk’ and ‘reluctantly accepting the extended expectations from society’.
To make sense of risk when aspiring for high-quality care in everyday work, the healthcare professionals in this sample mainly used their clinical gaze, gut feeling and experience to detect subtle changes in the patients’ condition. Assessing risk information, not only individually but also as a team, was reportedly crucial for high-quality care. Healthcare professionals emphasised the well-being, safety and soundness of the patients when acting on risk information. They felt obliged to act on their gut feeling, moral compass and clinical understanding of quality.
To identify occurrence of harmful incidents related to patient positioning on operating table.
Systematic review and meta-analysis.
Eight databases including Ovid, Medline, Embase, CINAHL, the Cochrane Library, Epistemonikos, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar were systematically searched from the inception of the databases to August 2023. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flow diagram depicting the flow information.
The Cochrane Risk of Bias Tools were used to assess the risk of bias. Risk of harm with 95% confidence interval (CI) was estimated for each included study, and an overall risk was calculated using meta-analysis.
Of the 22 included reports, two were randomized controlled trials (RCTs), five had a prospective cohort design, three had a cross-sectional design, and 12 were register-based studies. Intraoperative peripheral nerve injuries, perioperative pressure ulcers, musculoskeletal injuries, vascular injuries, postoperative pain and eye injuries were related to supine, lithotomy, Trendelenburg, prone and beach chair positioning. Overall risk of any harm was estimated as 0.2%. Studies with patients placed in prone positioning (8 study samples) had the highest risks of harm varying from 0.19 to 0.81, with an overall risk of 0.33. Meta-analysis of the two RCTs showed higher risk of chemosis with head-down positioning than with head in neutral position (overall relative risk = 1.64; 95% CI: [1.25, 2.14]).
Harmful incidents related to patient positioning occur and consequences can be severe. The operating room teams should be aware of the harms and prevent and treat them seriously.
This review underlines that research is sparse on patient positioning on operating table and harmful incidents. There is a need for high-quality, well-designed studies that focus on harmful incidents and prevention of harm related to patient positioning.
No patient or public contribution, as this is a review of previous research.
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