Chicago Pediatric Quality and Safety Consortium (CPQSC)

Mission

The CPQSC fosters research and educational collaboration between healthcare institutions to improve quality of care and patient safety for children.

GOALS

1.) To identify and study healthcare quality and patient safety in the systems, processes, and practices of providing medical care to children.
2.) To design patient safety and quality improvement interventions to address the specific risks for pediatric patients and institutions that provide medical care to children.
3.) To disseminate quality and safety interventions, tools, and processes, adapted for use by clinicians and institutions providing medical care to children.

CPQSC MEMBERS

Advocate Hope Children’s Hospital
Advocate Lutheran General Children’s Hospital
Denise Angst, PhD, Director of Pediatric Research 
Emily Hadley, MS, RN, Project Coordinator

John H. Stroger-Cook County Hospital
David Soglin, MD, Chairman, Department of Pediatrics
Susan Echiverri, MD, Chair, Division of Genetics and Metabolism

Mount Sinai Children’s Hospital
Dennis Vickers, MD, MPH, Chairman, Department of Pediatrics

Loyola University, Ronald McDonald Children’s Hospital
Kathleen Webster, MD, Director, Division of Pediatric Critical Care
Jenny Wang, MD, Project Coordinator

Research Focus Areas and Projects

Clinician to Clinician Communication

Clinician to clinician communication is a primary context for patient safety risk for pediatric patients. Several projects have explored this important safety context in order to develop and implement effective interventions addressing these risks.

• Strategies for Improving Clinician Communication: Focus Groups
• Strategies for Improving Clinician Communication: Chart Review
• Strategies for Improving Clinician Communication: Training Module
• Risk Informed Clinical Information Network for Safe Pediatric Transfers
• Risk Informed In-Situ Simulation for Pediatric Emergency Transfers

Risk Assessment

• Leveraging Existing Assessments of Risk Now (LEARN)
• Risk Assessments of Pediatric Emergency Transfers

Our Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)-funded pediatric patient safety projects have free, publicly available toolkits that can be adapted to most health care settings and include helpful items to conduct similar research at your institution, such as: checklists, templates, tips to improve processes, selected references and other resources. Please see below for our available toolkits.

Leveraging Existing Assessments of Risk Now (LEARN) Toolkit:

Risk Assessments for Pediatric Emergency Transfers Toolkit

Risk Informed In-Situ Simulation for Pediatric Emergency Transfers Toolkit

Recent Events and Presentations

Improving Communication and Team Performance Through Risk-informed In-Situ Simulation. Presenter: Anna Nannicelli, BS. Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) in Orlando, Florida (January 29, 2013).

Jane Holl, MD MPH, presented the abstract Improving Communication and Team Performance Using Risk-Informed In-Situ Simulation as part of a poster presentation at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting in Orlando, Florida. This presentation described the methods and preliminary results of the AHRQ and Michael Reese Health Trust-funded project: “Risk-Informed In-Situ Simulation for Pediatric Emergency Transfers” (PI: Holl/Woods).

Donna Woods, PhD EdM, presented the abstract Negotiating Physician Leadership in Academic Teaching Facilities – Learning through In-Situ Simulations as part of a poster presentation at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Integrating Quality Meeting in Chicago, Illinois (June 7-8, 2012). This presentation described results of the AHRQ and Michael Reese Health Trust-funded project, “Risk-Informed In-Situ Simulation for Pediatric Emergency Transfers” (PI: Holl/Woods), related to the challenges of negotiating leadership roles among physicians of differing levels of training.

Raising the Bar: Enhancing the Fidelity of In-situ Simulation in a Collaborative, Multi-institutional Team Training Project. Presenter: Anna Nannicelli, BS. International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) Interprofessional Education and Healthcare Simulation Symposium (January 28th, 2012).

Annual Michael Reese Health Trust Peer Review for the Chicago Pediatric Quality and Safety Consortium (CPQSC). Speaker: Jane Holl, MD, MPH and Donna Woods, EdM, PhD.  (November 8th, 2011).

Are We Looking at the Same Child?: Assessment and Communication Challenges in Pediatric Inter-facility Transfers. Speaker: Ranna Rozenfeld, MD. Research Project: Risk Informed Clinical Information Network for Safe Pediatric Emergency Transfers. 2011 AcademyHealth Child Health Services Research Meeting (June 11th, 2011).

Assessing and Improving Pediatric Patient Safety and Quality of Care through In-Situ Simulation. Speaker: Jane Holl, MD, MPH. The Joint Commission and Joint Commission Resources Annual Conference on Quality and Patient Safety (June 10th, 2011)

NACHRI LEARN Webinar. Speaker: Donna Woods, EdM, PhD. The National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions. (November 19, 2008).

Recognititon

Dr. Woods and Holl were awarded the 2006 Institute of Medicine – Chicago, Chicago Patient Safety Forum, Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute - Recognition in Patient Safety Award for their work in pediatric patient safety.

Publications

Woods DM, Holl JL, Angst D, Echiverri S, Johnson D, Soglin D, Srinivasan G, Barnathan J, Amsden L, Weiss K. Clinician Recommended Solutions: Improving Clinician to Clinician Communication in Hospital-based Pediatric Care. AHRQ Advances in Patient Safety: New Directions and Alternative Approaches. 2008 (In Press).

Woods DM, Holl JL, Angst D, Echiverri S, Johnson D, Soglin D, Srinivasan G, Barnathan J, Amsden L, Weiss K. Gaps in Pediatric Clinician Communication and Opportunities for Improvement. Journal of Healthcare Quality – Pediatric Special Issue. 2008 Sep-Oct;30(5):43-54

Woods DM, Holl JL, Young J, Wears R, Schwalenstocker E, Reynolds S, Barnathan J, Amsden L. Leveraging Existing Assessments of Risk Now (LEARN) Safety Analysis: A Method for Improving Pediatric Patient Safety. AHRQ Advances in Patient Safety: New Directions and Alternative Approaches. 2008 (In Press).

Franke H, Woods DM, Holl JL. High Alert Medications in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. 2009 January; 10(1): 85-90

Northwestern University Center for Healthcare Studies Pediatric Patient Safety Team