Improving response time and survival in ward based in-hospital cardiac arrest: A quality improvement initiative.

Background: Survival in cardiac arrest is associated with rapid initiation of high-quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and advanced life support. To improve ROSC rates and survival, we identified the need to reduce response times and implement coordinated resuscitation by dedicated cardiac arrest teams (CATs). We aimed to improve ROSC rates by 10% within 6 months, and subsequent survival to hospital discharge.

Methods: We used the Model for Improvement to implement a ward-based cardiac arrest quality improvement (QI) initiative across 3 Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles. QI interventions focused on instituting dedicated CATs and resuscitation equipment, staff training, communications, audit framework, performance feedback, as well as a cardiac arrest documentation form. The primary outcome was the rate of ROSC, and the secondary outcome was survival to hospital discharge. Process measures were call center processing times, CAT response times and CAT nurses' knowledge and confidence regarding CPR. Balancing measures were the number of non-cardiac arrest activations and the number of cardiac arrest activations in patients with existing do-not-resuscitate orders.

Results: After adjustments for possible confounders in the multivariate analysis, there was a significant improvement in ROSC rate post-intervention as compared to the pre-intervention period (OR 2.05 [1.04-4.05], p = 0.04). Median (IQR) call center processing times decreased from 1.8 (1.6-2.0) pre-intervention to 1.4 (1.4-1.6) minutes post-intervention (p = 0.03). Median (IQR) CAT response times decreased from 5.1 (4.5-7.0) pre-intervention to 3.6 (3.4-4.3) minutes post-intervention (p < 0.001). After adjustments for possible confounders in the multivariate analysis, there was no significant improvement in survival to hospital discharge post-intervention as compared to the pre-intervention period (OR 0.71 [0.25-2.06], p = 0.53).

Conclusion: Implementation of a ward-based cardiac arrest QI initiative resulted in an improvement in ROSC rates, median call center and CAT response times.

Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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