Pain Management Journal Benchmark

The service I work for operates just south of the Metro Atlanta area and is owned by an established and successful hospital system. Our service is relatively small, four twenty-four hour trucks and one day truck, compared to number of call we handle per year, but also one of the most respected services in the metro Atlanta area as well. So, the areas that I would benchmark for clinical areas are the administration of pain medication along with the associated symptoms and the number of successful intravenous attempts for each provider within the service. The operational measures would include the time a twelve-lead electrocardiogram is performed within the first ten minutes of arriving at patient’s side complaining of chest pain or shortness of breath and out at hospital times. The final measure that I would like to measure is the personal performance of each paramedic to properly recognize changes in the electrocardiogram (EKG) and other symptoms that indicate a patient is or could be experiencing symptoms of an acute myocardial infarctions within the first ten minutes of arriving at their side. I will be using the following types of benchmarks for my data collection which are internal and comparative benchmarks. The internal benchmarks will in the two clinical areas of pain management and successful intravenous attempts and this data will only come from our services patient care reports (Youngberg, B.J. ,2011). The comparative benchmarks will allow us to compare our services arrival to twelve lead EKG performance and out at hospital times with other services within our geographical area. The final benchmark will also be a comparative benchmark that identifies the ability of our field paramedics to successfully identify patients with symptoms of a myocardial infarction within the first ten minutes of their arrival at their side. All of this information will be used to identify the need of specific personnel to receive additional training within this vital area of patient care. The pain management benchmark is important so we could identify which pain medication was being administered most often and the associated symptoms presenting by the patient when administered. This data is important because according to an article found in the June, 2013 edition of EMS World Magazine titled Things Your System Should Deliver pain is described as being bad. This is because this maybe the only opportunity to break what is sometimes called the pain cascade because if pain is left untreated it can slow a patient’s ability to heal, can cause possible damage to a patient’s immune system and neurological system which then can cause chronic pain (Sullivan, R.J. , 2013). By looking at the number of intravenous attempts we can better show when our personnel need additional training specifically in the area of intravenous access for patient that require treatments of this type. The comparative bench for time between arrival to patients complaining of chest pains or shortness of breath …show more content…
This benchmark is not only vital to supporting national standards also keeping our hospital’s cardiac accreditation status. More important than keeping the accreditation in good standing this benchmark allows field personnel the chance to administer the best possible care before the patient ever arrives at the emergency room. This benchmark will also allow us to see how we measure up to both smaller and larger services within our geographical