The power of open medical information
One of my favorite stories illustrating the power of openly sharing health information is the feedback we received about our video “Accessing a Central Venous Catheter” by Mary Jeanne Manning, RN. Not too long after launching the video in 2013, we received the following feedback from a physician in Turkey:
While watching a training video about accessing a central venous line on OPENPediatrics our physicians and nurses at a pediatric hospital in Turkey discussed our central-line access practice. Prior to watching the video, all of the clinicians were allowed to access the central lines and we had a high rate of central line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI). After watching this video on OPENPediatrics, however, we decided to test a new strategy and allow only the nursing staff to access central lines in patients. After many months using this strategy learned from an OPENPediatrics video, the rate of central line associated bloodstream infections declined dramatically. Eventually, however, the physicians became frustrated that their access to central lines was restricted and decided to return to our old system. When we did, the central line infections went back up to our previously high rate. So now, we are going back to the protocol for accessing a central venous line that we learned on OPENPediatrics!
It’s really remarkable to work on a project where the material we publish can have an immediate–and measurable–impact on the well-being of children around the world. You can view an excerpt of the video involved below, and the full video is available to clinicians on our clinician community site. For more great OP user stories, visit the user stories page of our public site.
Stephen Carson 