Safety solution for medical tubes

Purpose and goal

A need study on incidents where intravenous tubes are accidentally pulled out during use has been conducted at three Swedish hospitals. The study was conducted using a questioner, where one questioner was to be filled out for each incident. The questions included was, e.g., who caused the tube to be pulled out, how long time it took to re-establish therapy after an accident and if the personnel were exposed to spilled medicine and/or blood in connection with the accident.

Expected results and effects

The consultant hired for the job has long experience from clinical studies and has during the project transferred much of this knowledge to our employees. They have been trained in developing questionnaires, clinical study methodology, and data analysis. This will soon be very useful since we are planning to conduct a usability study for our product, followed by a health economic study in connection with market entry.

Planned approach and implementation

The project has been executed according to plan, apart from a delay in time to be able to collect enough data for a statistical analysis. The results confirm the need for our product. For example, healthcare personnel was exposed to leaking medication and/or blood in 56% of the accidents, and in 76% of the accidents did a nurse have to interrupt what he/she was doing in order to handle the incident.