Denver Health recently received a two-year $600,000 grant from HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to develop a model to improve communication among caregivers in an effort to reduce medical errors related to team communication failures.

This grant is part of Denver Health's overall health care process transformation, "Getting it Right: Perfecting the Patient Experience," and focuses on nurse/physician communication to enhance the role of the professional nurse in the patient care team.

"We will implement a standardized communications tool, called SBAR, which is a situational briefing model or scripting guide that includes an escalation time line for communicating patient needs or change in patient status," said Kay Daugherty, RN, Ph.D., Denver Health's chief nursing officer, and the grant's principle investigator. "Industry-wide, many patient incidents are connected to miscommunication. We expect to see a significant decrease in medical errors related to implementation of the communication strategies developed as a result of this grant."

Communication strategies will include standard procedures in patient-centered rounds of all disciplines of the health care team, as well as interdisciplinary team goal setting for each patient and team huddles on each shift. The first phase begins July 1, 2005, in the MICU and two other Acute Care units of Denver Health Medical Center.

This is the first significant Denver Health Department of Nursing federal grant and Denver Health was were one of 15 health care organizations in the United States to be awarded a portion of the $8,000,000 AHRQ is allocating for patient safety grants. All programs are funded for two years and are designed to help clinicians, facilities and patients implement evidence-based safety practices. In addition to Dr. Daugherty, other Denver Health investigators include Catherine Dingley, RN, Ph.D., coordinator of nursing research; Catherine Beckmann, RN, MSN, director of nursing; Philip Mehler, M.D., associate medical director; and Rick Albert, M.D., director of medicine service.

As the plan progresses over the next two years, Daugherty hopes to have the SBAR and team practices in place throughout Denver Health. Daugherty and her team will develop a comprehensive toolkit to facilitate hospital wide implementation. AHRQ will widely disseminate the tools from this and the other 14 grants for adaptation and/or adoption by other institutions.

Denver Health, formerly known as Denver General Hospital, is the Rocky Mountain Region's Level I academic trauma center, and the safety net hospital for the Denver area. The Denver Health system, which integrates acute and emergency care with public and community health, includes the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center, Denver Public Health, Rocky Mountain Regional Trauma Center, Denver's 911 emergency medical response system, Denver Health Paramedic Division, nine family health centers, 12 school-based health clinics, NurseLine, Correctional Care, Denver CARES, Denver Health Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Center for Medical Response to Terrorism, Mass Casualties and Epidemics.

Donna Kettenbach
Associate Director of Public Relations
Denver Health
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