Checklists – The road to a safer healthcare in heart failure patients

Health care today is complex and mistakes can occur due to multiple reasons from lack of knowledge to simply lack of attention to detail. Checklists are a way to prevent mistakes and implement common standards of care but there are difficulties in implementing checklists. In this article we are showing a series of checklists which we have successfully used in the management of heart failure in a tertiary care hospital in India. The checklists start from the time the patient is admitted (the Intensive care Check list) to the time of discharge. The patient's visit to the out patient department is also covered by multiple education cards and checklists (Heart Failure Checklist, HRIDAY CARD). There are also standard prognostic tools (Seattle heart failure score and many others) which are used to prognosticate patients which do not respond to drug therapy. The I-NEED-HELP tool is explained to choose patients who might benefit from an cardiac assist device or a heart transplant.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-SA

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