Safety and quality update

New this month: VPCC Clinical Practice Points; Preventing unrecognised oesophageal intubation; Patient safety and transfer from ICU to general wards; webAIRS and data collection

VPCC practice points

The Victorian Perioperative Consultative Council (VPCC) has developed Clinical Practice Points based on a review of early 2024 cases associated with serious harm or death from surgery.

TGA safety alert: GLP-1 and dual GIP/GLP-1 receptor agonists

The TGA has published a safety alert warning about risks to patients during general anaesthesia or deep sedation when taking GLP-1 and dual GIP/GLP-1 receptor agonists.

Preventing unrecognised oesophageal intubation

ANZCA supports and has published the following guideline: Preventing unrecognised oesophageal intubation: a consensus guideline from the Project for Universal Management of Airways and international airway societies.

Patient safety and transfer from ICU to general wards

JAMA has recently published a paper entitled "Optimising Safety for Patients Transferred From Intensive Care Units to General Medical Wards." The paper can be accessed via the ANZCA library.

webAIRs – “We cannot fix what we do not know”

In the ANZCA Bulletin article, webAIRS incident reporting in 2022, Dr Yasmin Endlich, Medical Director of Australian and New Zealand Tripartite Anaesthetic Data Committee (ANZTADC), educated us on the invaluable data collected when reporting anaesthesia related near misses or adverse events to webAIRS.

As well as the patient demographic and narrative description, webAIRS collects anaesthesia and procedure details, a reflection of the event, and theoption to assign one or more of nine main categories including: respiratory/airway, cardiovascular, medication, neurological, medical device/equipment, assessment/documentation, infrastructure/system, other organ and miscellaneous.

View the Demo version

For more information, get in touch.