A new study has uncovered some "shocking" news : hospitals are not necessarily the safest places to have heart attacks. Why is it shocking? Because at least one third of the hospitals do not "shock" in time to save a patient who has a correctable arrhythmia. So maybe its not shocking enough that is the problem ..?!
Anyway, this anonymous study, "the largest ever" to look at cardiac outcomes of "shockable" abnormalities in cardiac rhythm is even more shocking (bear with me) because the hospitals included in the study were part of a national registry for cardiac arrests, meaning that they were probably already working better than average.
Factors named in this deplorable outcome (1/3rd cardiac cases not treated in time) are :
- When the patient has the heart attack (nights and weekends being the worst time)
- the size of the hospital ( <250 beds associated with unfavorable outcomes)
- absence of cardiac monitors (obviously)
- not enough cardiac monitoring of non-cardiac patients
- the race of a person (black people for e.g. mostly because of living near hospitals with problems like 2 and 3 )
- not enough people trained to use defibrillators
- not enough automatic defibrillators
- not enough nurses/ doctors
- not enough training - for e.g. rapid response teams and mock resuscitation drills to keep personnel sharp
Dr. Saxon of the University of Southern California lightly comments that a heart attack may have better chances of being noticed in the middle of a mall rather than in an understaffed, unprepared and/or unmonitored hospital setting.
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