Association Between Hospital Debriefing Practices With Adherence to Resuscitation Process Measures and Outcomes for In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

Background Identifying actionable resuscitation practices that vary across hospitals could improve adherence to process measures or outcomes after in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA). We sought to examine whether hospital debriefing frequency after IHCA varies across hospitals and whether hospitals which routinely perform debriefing have higher rates of process-of-care compliance or survival. Methods We conducted a nationwide survey of hospital resuscitation practices in April of 2018, which were then linked to data from the Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation national registry for IHCA. Hospitals were categorized according to their reported frequency of debriefing immediately after IHCA; rarely (0%-20% of all IHCA cases), occasionally (21%-80%), and frequently (81%-100%). Hospital-level rates of timely defibrillation (≤2 minutes), epinephrine administration (≤5 minutes), survival to discharge, return of spontaneous circulation, and neurologically intact survival were comparted for patients with IHCA from 2015 to 2017. Results Overall, there were 193 hospitals comprising 44 477 IHCA events. Mean patient age was 65±16, 41% were females, and 68% were of White race. Across hospitals, 84 (43.5%) rarely performed debriefings immediately after an IHCA, 82 (42.5%) performed debriefing sessions occasionally, and 27 (14.0%) performed debriefing frequently. There was no association between higher reported debriefing frequency and hospital rates of timely defibrillation and epinephrine administration. Mean hospital rates of risk-standardized survival to discharge were similar across debriefing frequency groups (rarely 25.6%; occasionally 26.0%; frequently 25.2%, P=0.72), as were hospital rates of risk-adjusted return of spontaneous circulation (rarely 72.2%; occasionally 73.0%; frequently 70.0%, P=0.06) and neurologically intact survival (rarely 21.9%, occasionally 22.2%, frequently 21.1%, P=0.75). Conclusions In a large contemporary nationwide quality improvement registry, hospitals varied widely in how often they conducted debriefings immediately after IHCA. However, hospital debriefing frequency was not associated with better adherence to timely delivery of epinephrine or defibrillation or higher rates of IHCA survival.