The NHS North West London Critical Care Network has rolled out a new bag to aid the transfer of patients between wards, when going for scans or from one hospital to another.The Patient Transfer Bag was designed with full input from frontline clinicians in critical care and emergency departments, and 70 are now in use in every hospital across North West London.
Nursing Times article stated "Now that the bag has been rolled out as standard clinical practice, it is expected to save up to eight hours a week in units - the equivalent of one whole clinician's shift."The design is intended to allow for easy access to each piece of medical equipment, using a unique storage layout with clear plastic pockets for each item, and easy and quick access to essential items. Other features include a special side-pouch called the "patient pocket" to allow for additional items unique to each patient to be packed and brightly-coloured internal pouches with bold-print labels so things can be found quickly in an emergency. It also has a "super-strength" reversible strap to make the bag easy to attach to a bed or trolley while in use.
Nurses and other staff involved in patient transfers told the Critical Care Network that while historically each provider or hospital has had a system for equipping transfers of its own in place, it was not previously standardised across regions or networks.
Winning a National Patient Safety Award - "as a Critical Care Network we are thrilled to have won this award. The strength of the NWLCC Network is the membership and collaboration of front line clinicians. This National recognition of our work and this award in relation to patient safety and reduction in variation will help us to continue delivering great results. Already the project has spread beyond London and we are now hearing of interest from Ireland and Finland.
The award will help publicise the Patient transfer bag and we hope that many more critically ill patients benefit as a result.”
The original work to determine the contents and design is here http://www.londonccn.nhs.uk/_store/documents/a-consensus-to-determine-the-ideal-critical-care-transfer-bag.pdf For more details about the Patient Transfer Bag visit http://www.londonccn.nhs.uk/news_item.asp?fldID=301