Family-Activated Medical Emergency Team Model Demonstrates Wisdom of Loved Ones
Every children’s hospital could benefit from a family-activated Medical Emergency Team (MET), based on results of a seven-year study showing that parents and family members of hospitalized children are capable of identifying complications and medical emergencies that require immediate intervention.
The 4.5-year study of the MET program at Cincinnati Children’s found that parents did not overuse a system that empowers them to notify an on-site, multi-disciplinary team if they feel their child’s condition is worsening (high fever, breathing difficulties, worsening abdominal pain) or if they feel hospital staff are not responding to their concerns. Parents made an average of 1.2 calls a month (2.9 percent of the total) to the hospital’s MET team; 24 percent of which resulted in children being moved to the intensive care unit (ICU). Staff-initiated calls (97 percent of the total) to the MET resulted in 60 percent of children being transferred to ICU.
The study, published Dec. 14, 2014, in BMJ Quality and Safety, is accompanied by an editorial by a British father whose son’s infection-caused death shortly after birth was linked to the UK hospital staff’s inattentiveness to the parents’ concerns. He advocates the formation of MET teams in pediatric hospitals worldwide because of the study’s positive findings.
Cincinnati Children’s adopted the MET program in 2007, supported by in-room posters that inform parents when, why and how to active the team.
Lead author Patrick Brady, MD, MSc, attending physician with the Division of Hospital Medicine, says the study clearly shows some patient needs would have been missed without family-initiated alerts. He urges hospitals to devise their own MET strategies to leverage family expertise.
“Given the growing evidence of modest cost and potential benefits, we advocate for testing and adaptation of family-activated METs in all contexts,” Brady says.
