Why In Time?
In-hospital cardiac arrests occur at least as often in acute care medical and surgical areas as those equipped with critical care resources (ICU, CCU, ER).  Survivability to discharge in acute care is typically significantly less than in critical care areas. Delays lasting several minutes are common between calling Code Blue and having the team there and ready to go. All evidence points to the effects of key interventions made in the first few minutes before the critical care team arrives. The work done in the first few minutes by medical and surgical personnel is often much more instrumental to survival than advanced interventions performed by the Code Blue team. What happens in the first few minutes can matter most!

Patient safety is a growing concern in and out of hospital. Recent reports point to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths annually to patients in hospital attributed to the combined effects of Hospital-Acquired Infection (HAI), Medical Error (ME) and a Failure to Rescue (FtR) patients who are acutely deteriorating. Ranked the 3rd most likely cause of death behind only heart disease and cancer, being a patient in a hospital has a real risk for tragic injuries and lives lost.

In Time Acute Care tackles Failure to Rescue.

The complex causes behind FtR can often be addressed with simple measures.  Research into FtR has identified several contributors:

• gaps in knowledge of typical or less frequent signs and symptoms of hemodynamic compromise
• lack of situational awareness of patient deterioration further hampered by high patient to care provider ratio, infrequent exposure to emergencies and caregiver fatigue
• handover communication failures
• inability to mobilize resources and employ needed skills
• choosing ‘one-size-fits-all’ interventions without identifying key actions that are most likely to yield the most success
• for the arrested patient, poor performance of chest compression (rate, depth, and recoil),  over-ventilation, and delays in optimal interventions

In Time Acute Care brings: a practical approach to core competencies, key skills development, and the grounded knowledge to remain ready for those facing clinical deterioration.