Shane Cook, quality improvement nurse for LA County Fire Department, has helped LA County Fire Department dramatically improve the quality of CPR to their patients. He was able to achieve this result by using data from Case Review’s performance summary to train trainers and hundreds of paramedics and EMTs on high-quality CPR. Shane is a ZOLL Pulse Award winner. Here’s why:

Data Shows Room for Improvement

In 2015, with the addition of the ZOLL X Series monitor, LA County Fire Department increased its efforts in data collection, measurement and analysis as part of a major quality improvement initiative for cardiac arrest. They then changed their CPR feedback software to RescueNet CaseReview from ZOLL, which provided an intuitive platform for data analysis. The initial data gathered in December 2015 showed significant opportunities for improvement across most measures. It was apparent crews needed additional training and support in order to achieve evidence-based goals.

Using the Data to Improve CPR

“Our organization had never looked at the quality of CPR. Analyzing our data then showed that the quality of our CPR was suboptimal,” said Dr. Clayton Kazan, medical director for LA County Fire Department. “Compressions were too shallow, too fast and frequently interrupted. We introduced the concept of high-quality CPR in 2016, and Shane took it and ran with it throughout 2017 and currently.”

In His Own Words: Why is it Imperative for an EMS Agency to Run Efficiently as Possible?

“We here at LA County Fire Department Quality Improvement Section have adopted some of the famous quotes from W. Edwards Deming:

• You can’t manage what you don’t measure
• In God WE Trust, All Others Must Bring Data

Collecting the data on how well our department manages patients in cardiac arrest has allowed us to significantly improve how effectively and efficiently our patients are managed, which has led to some pretty amazing outcomes. In the medical community there is nothing more powerful than being able to save the life of a human being. An efficiently lead EMS agency can better accomplish this goal of saving lives.”