Grant: Operating Grant

What is the problem? Almost a million Canadians visit emergency departments every year seeking healthcare due to heart-related problems. When complications are related to healthcare, the consequences can be serious and devastating. Common heart-related reasons for patients coming to the emergency department include those who have fluid on the lungs (heart failure), heart rhythm problems (atrial fibrillation) and fainting (syncope). Why is it important? Researchers have discovered that a high proportion of these healthcare related complications (called adverse events) are preventable. Understanding the cause of these healthcare related complications will better enable solutions to prevent future unintended harm to Canadians. What will this study achieve? The goal of this study is to determine what systemic and patient factors increase the risk of preventable healthcare related complications among emergency department patients with heart-related problems. We are focusing on a high risk group of people who are sent home from the emergency department: people over the age of 50 who have heart failure, atrial fibrillation and syncope. We will follow over 6500 patients across 10 Canadian emergency departments using health record review and telephone interviews. We will then ask teams of emergency doctors to review the records of patients who subsequently died, were admitted to hospital, visited an emergency department, saw their own doctor or felt worse 14 days after their first visit to the emergency department. This team of experts will identify complications related to healthcare received on the initial emergency department visit. What will be the impact of this study? Patient safety has been identified as a pressing national and provincial priority in healthcare. The results of this study will help prevent healthcare associated complications for people with these heart-related problems by producing the data needed to create patient safety enhancing solutions.