Intervening before there’s drama: Rapid Response Teams

"A trigger [for a rapid response team] is not about excitement and drama; it's about intervening before there's drama," said Jeanne Quinn, a senior nurse on a unit for post-surgery and trauma patients. Minutes earlier, Judy Wagoner, a 29-year-old nurse with 2.5 years experience, had activated a trigger when her patient's blood pressure plunged to 56.

As the senior nurse on the floor, Jeanne responded and helped Judy gradually raise Carol Emerson's pressure back into the 100s. The team ordered an electrocardiogram to rule out underlying heart problems and a blood transfusion, and kept the patient an extra night. About 80% of the nurses on the floor have less than two years of experience, while Jeanne has 15.

No one knows for sure if early intervention helped Carol, who was in the hospital so surgeons could repair broken bones in her left arm, avoid cardiac arrest. And Judy said she would have asked for Jeanne's help even before the new rules.

But doctors believe the key to reducing patient mortality is to intervene at the first sign of trouble, before the patient "[cardiac] arrests," an emergency where the heart or lungs — or both— shut down.

Dr. Michael Howell, an intensive care specialist, hopes the Rapid Response team will prevent delays like one he described a few years ago to the Beth Israel Deaconess board of directors: Doctors admitted an elderly man to the hospital for gastric bleeding. When his systolic blood pressure dipped into the 80s, his nurse and an intern gave him intravenous fluids to push it back up to normal range. His pressure climbed back into normal range. Over the next eight hours, his blood pressure kept falling, and they kept pumping in fluids. Low blood pressure is generally not life threatening until it dips into the 70s or 60s. But they failed to recognize that the subtler decline masked a more serious underlying problem: massive stomach bleeding. The next morning, a senior doctor did, and transferred the patient to the ICU, which has the staffing expertise and equipment to intervene more rapidly. But it was too late.

"I don't know that we would have saved him," Dr. Howell said. "But it's absolutely possible."

Advice to family members of hospitalized patients: Find out how the hospital activates a rapid response team.

Read about Massachusetts legislation enabling family members to activate rapid response methods in hospitals.

Thanks to Liz Kowalczyk for the source story in the Boston Globe of Nov. 27, 2005.