Improving Cardiogenic Shock Team Activation Through Nurse Education and Alert Implementation

Background: Patients with cardiogenic shock have a 25% to 50% mortality rate despite the introduction of mechanical circulatory devices and coordinated medical treatment. The use of shock teams has improved outcomes for these patients.

Local problem: A cardiovascular hospital with a multidisciplinary shock team had inconsistency and delays in recognition and diagnosis of patients with cardiogenic shock.

Methods: A nurse-led, preintervention-postintervention quality improvement project was performed in April and May 2021 and in April and May 2022 within a cardiovascular hospital in north Texas. The 2 nursing staff interventions regarding shock team activation were education and shock alert implementation. Time from first signs to diagnosis (for inpatients) and time from initial transfer request to acceptance (for transferring patients) were measured. Descriptive and statistical analyses were conducted using R, version 4.0.0 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing).

Results: The mean (SD) time to diagnosis of cardiogenic shock decreased significantly from 17.98 (28.39) hours in the preintervention group (n = 25) to 8.15 (12.26) hours in the postintervention group (n = 45; P = .045). For patients with cardiogenic shock transferring from referring hospitals, the median (IQR) time to acceptance was 1.55 (0.08-3.18) hours in the preintervention group and 0.35 (0.00-0.72) hours in the postintervention group (P < .001).

Conclusions: Nursing staff interventions regarding shock team activation significantly improved the time of diagnosis and acceptance of patients with cardiogenic shock in a cardiovascular hospital, enhancing the overall quality of care provided to these patients.