Effects of Increasing the Use of a Medical Emergency Team in Reducing the Occurrence of Cardiopulmonary Arrest on the General Medical-Surgical Unit

Abstract

The degree to which adverse events such as cardiopulmonary arrest are preventable is unclear. The implementation of Medical Emergency Teams (MET) can identify and treat patients before the patient’s condition deteriorates to the point that cardiopulmonary resuscitation is needed. The purpose of this literature review is to summarize the evidence supporting the effectiveness of Medical Emergency Teams on reducing the occurrence of cardiopulmonary arrests on general medical surgical units. Pediatric studies are excluded from this review. A literature search was performed to compare the number of cardiac arrests prior to and after the use of a Medical Emergency Team. Five studies fitting the search criteria were included in this review. All five of the studies supported a decrease in cardiopulmonary arrests after the implementation of a medical emergency team. One of these five studies reported that the implementation of a medical emergency team was not associated with lower hospital wide code rates. Research supports that the percent of cardiopulmonary arrests rates decrease in hospitals with the use of a Medical Emergency Team. It is recommended that staff are educating on the criteria of when to activate a medical emergency team. Further research is needed to look at clinical outcomes and the appropriate personnel composing the team.

Keywords: Medical emergency teams, rapid response teams, cardiac arrests, cardiopulmonary arrests.