A Quality Improvement Survey to Assess Pain Management in Cardiac Surgery Patients

Objective: To evaluate the quality of pain management in cardiac ICU patients by using a questionnaire. Methodology: All post cardiac surgery patients between 18 and 75 years old were included in this survey. Chronic pain patients, paediatric patients, emergency surgeries were excluded. A predesigned proforma was prepared according to American Pain Society recommendations and distributed among Cardiac ICU patients after 24 hours of extubation. This proforma was explained to the patients and collected later. The questionnaire was related to pain severity, aggravating and relieving factors, side effects of analgesics, affective experience and satisfaction with pain management. Results: Total 308 patients participated in one year period. 243 (78.9%) were male and 65 (21.1%) were female. Multimodal analgesia was used in most of the patients. Severity of pain was described as mild 70% and moderate 28.6%. Most of the patients complained of sharp pain 100 (37.5%), mainly at the site of incision 129 (41.9%). The main aggravating factor associated with increased pain was deep breathing 118 (39.8%) while pain was minimized by taking pain medications 40.6%. A significant association was found between preoperative counseling about pain options and satisfaction. 96.8% reported satisfaction with pain management. Conclusion: Although overall pain control was reported as adequate and patients were highly satisfied, there were areas which need further improvement. These include strategies to provide preoperative information about postoperative pain management and better training of medical staff to assess and manage pain. Additionally, the concerns and fears of patients about pain treatment need to be addressed.

Errors during Paediatric Cardiac Anaesthesia: Reporting and Learning

Incident reporting is a reliable quality assurance tool, frequently used in anaesthesia to identify errors. It was introduced in anaesthesia by Cooper in 1978 and since then several institutions have adopted this system to find adverse events and near misses. We think that the incident reporting would be more beneficial for prolonged and technically complex procedures like paediatric cardiac surgery. Methods: All paediatric CHD patients scheduled for cardiac surgery were included in this audit. Thoracic and general surgery patients were excluded. Any event in preoperative area, induction room, operating room and during transfer to cardiac ICU was documented in a predesigned proforma by resident/consultant. This proforma included information regarding demographics, the type and severity and responsible factors for the event. Results: 134 patients were included in this two and half years audit. 88 patients were male (65.7%) and 46 (34.3%) were female. The age of the patients ranged from one day to 15 years. Total 105 incidents were noticed in 61 patients. 46 incidents were declared as major events which were potentially serious while 59 events were of minor nature. Cuffed endotracheal tube was used in 73% patients. The majority of events occurred in the pre-bypass period. Most of the incidents were related to cardiovascular system (73%), followed by pharmacological incidents. Human factors (74%) were mainly responsible for the incidents. Conclusion: Incident reporting is a reliable and feasible method of improving quality care in developing countries. It helps in identifying areas which need improvement and helps in developing guidelines to improve safety.