An electronic naso-gastric tube pathway, incorporating a clinical decision support tool, improves patient safety and reporting

Abstract

Due to the ongoing patient safety concerns arising from misplaced naso-gastric tubes (NGT), NHS Improvement requested assurance from hospital trusts that all safety critical requirements for placement checks are in place1. A never event in 2020 identified the need to improve compliance to documentation of safety critical requirements. Critical Care routinely use x-ray confirmation for initial placement checks, accompanied by a paper based LocSSIP2 modified to include the 4 point criteria for x-ray reporting.