RQI program now offered at Anderson Regional Medical Center

A new program that refreshes a hospital staff on their CPR skills every 90 days has been taking place at Anderson Regional Medical Center for the past two days. Resuscitation Quality Improvement is an American Heart Association program that focuses on improved patient quality and healthcare costs. It is only about a year old and has been adopted by hospitals around the country, but Anderson Regional Health System is the first in Mississippi, to do so.

“Other hospitals that have implanted RQI throughout the country have seen great improvements in their patient outcomes. One specific hospital saw a 21% improvement in survival rates for in-hospital cardiac arrests. So, basically the program can be shown to save lives.” -Jennifer Hopping: VP, American Heart Association, MS

The machines the staff work on give them feedback as they are participating.

“RQI computers are actually very sensitive, and so they monitor their chest compression, how fast they need to do them, how deep they need to do them, and then also the ventilation. So, it really gets them to practice in a real-life setting because it talks to them throughout the training.” -Hopping

While this program allows hospital staff to refresh every 3 months and, in the hospital,, before that, they would have to go elsewhere and could only do so every two years.

“Studies have shown that the more often the hospital staff can be refreshed on their skills, the higher quality their CPR will be when they have to do it within an emergency situation.” -Hopping