| iMDsoft Excellence Award 2009 |
Dr Vuylsteke critical care team awarded the iMDsoft Excellence Award 2009The study entitled "The impact of Computerized Physician Order Entry on prescribing practices in cardiothoracic ICU" is awarded the second prize in the iMDsoft Excellence award competition. This work had previously been awarded prizes by the Association of Cardiothoracic Anaesthetists; and demonstrates the benefits of computerized order entry in critical care. The adage “To Err is Human” has been recognized by many for a very long time, and gives a sense of the inescapable to our common mistakes. One could, therefore, argue that it might have been wrong to highlight that sense of unpreventable in a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine (USA) telling us that between 44,000 and 98,000 patients die per year due to medical errors [1]. And, indeed, the Institute chose the more inspiring title of “Preventing Medication Errors” when it subsequently reported in 2006 that there is approximately one medication error per patient per day. This title at least suggested that it might be possible to act and decrease this burden [2]. The UK Department of Health went one step further when it reported that adverse events caused harm to patients in up to 16% of admissions, and published ‘An organization with a memory’, urging us to learn from past mistakes to build a safer health care environment [3]. An summary of the findings was published in anaesthesia (Anaesthesia. 63(11):1271, November 2008.) and a paper related to this can be read in the Intensive Care Medicine Annual Update 2008 http://www.springerlink.com/content/q2605p1314154867/. |
