Hospitalized patients have a higher risk of cardiac arrest and transfers to intensive care if they’re in wards when other patients have recently suffered similar emergencies, a new study suggests.
“This should serve as a wake-up call for hospital-based physicians,” study author Dr. Matthew Churpek, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, said in a university news release.
“After caring for a patient who becomes critically ill on the hospital wards, we should routinely check to see how the other patients on the unit are doing,” he said.
