Several studies have addressed the processing of anesthetic information by paper anesthetic data records or by the electronic storage and transfer of anesthetic data. Our purpose was to analyze the oral transfer of information in the postoperative period. We investigated 198 post-operative transfer situations with 120 patients in a U.S. hospital to compare the results with those of a former study in a German hospital. A great number of parameters were used in both hospitals, but there were remarkable differences. In the U.S. hospital numeric values of current vital functions, including oxygen saturation, were more common during information transfer, whereas in the German hospital the emphasis was on case history and chronic health status. The data from the U.S. hospital and those of the German hospital show that in spite of complete anesthetic records, a short (112.3 +/- 104 sec in the U.S. and 94.1 +/- 83.6 sec in Germany) oral information transfer is inevitable when the patient is transferred from the OR to the recovery room, and from the recovery room to the ward (122.7 +/- 61.4 sec in the U.S. and and 88.0 +/- 73.0 in Germany). Software developers of patient data management systems could learn from this study that in some situations it is necessary and possible to create a small set of data which will reflect the patients status quite well.

Anesthesiology↗

PubMed1992

Can a clinician predict the technical equipment a patient will need during intensive care unit treatment? An approach to standardize and redesign the intensive care unit workstation.

The technical equipment of today's intensive care unit (ICU) workstation has been characterized by a gradual, incremental accumulation of individual devices, whose presence is dictated by patient needs. These devices usually present differently designed controls, operate under different alarm philosophies, and cannot communicate with each other. By contrast, ICU workstations could be equipped permanently and in a standardized manner with electronically linked modules if the attending physicians could reliably predict, at the time of admission, the patient's equipment needs. Over a period of 3 1/2 months, the doctors working in our 20-bed surgical ICU made 1,000 predictions concerning outcome, equipment need, duration of artificial ventilation, and duration of hospitalization for 300 recently admitted patients. The interviews were made within the first 24 hours after admission. The doctors being interviewed were usually (i.e., in over 90% of cases) unfamiliar with the patient. Information concerning the patient's general state of health, special pre-ICU events, and complications was offered to the interviewed clinician because this information represents standard admission data. It was found that the equipment need (represented by two different setups, "high tech" and "low tech") could be predicted most reliably (96.4% correct predictions) compared with a prediction on outcome of ICU treatment (94.5%), on duration of artificial ventilation (75.4%), and on duration of stay (43.4%). There was no significant (p greater than 0.05) difference in the reliability of predictions between residents and consultants. Factors influencing the postoperative equipment need varied with surgical specialty.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Anesthesia Department, Hospital↗