A Resident-Led Quality Improvement Initiative to Optimize Care for Children and Young Adults with Sickle Cell Disease Vaso-Occlusive Pain with Intranasal Fentanyl in the Emergency Department

Background: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited blood condition that predisposes affected patients to severe vaso-occlusive (VOC) pain events. The NHLBI (last revised in 2014) and ASH guidelines (last revised 2020) recommend a door-to-first dose should be within 60 minutes vs. 30 minutes from registration, and reassessment and re-administration of medications should be every 30 minutes. Non-IV routes of administration, i.e. intranasal (IN) can facilitate rapid analgesic treatment. Recent studies have shown IN Fentanyl as an effective pharmacological strategy to treat vaso-occlusive pain episodes. Methods: This resident-led Quality Improvement specific aim was to reduce the meantime from check-in to first analgesic delivery to SCD patients with VOC presenting to the Pediatric Emergency Department (PED) by at least 20% during 12 months and to improve the overall care of SCD VOC in accordance to best practices. PDSA cycle methodology was utilized to identify root causes, countermeasures, and key drivers (Figure 1A). We implemented a SCD VOC clinical pathway for PED providers to utilize our enhanced and updated version of an electronic order set named “PED Sickle Cell Crisis Power Plan” that includes IN Fentanyl as first-line therapy for SCD VOC. IRB approval was obtained. PED nursing staff was trained to administer IN Fentanyl with a nasal mucosa atomizer. Exclusion criteria of patients with SCD with other ICD-10 diagnosis codes, i.e pain not associated with VOC. The main indicators were assessment-to-dose time; registration-to-discharge time; first dose-to-discharge time, and rate of VOC admissions. Data was collected by discrete-time stamps and statistically analyzed using Excel 365. The analysis compared baseline with initial PDSA cycles from December 2019 to February 2020, and from September 2020 to March 2021. Results: From September 2020 to February 2021, a total of 54 encounters for SCD VOC qualified clinically to receive IN Fentanyl. A total of 49 of these encounters received this medication, while 5 refused its administration. Patient demographics: Male-to-female ratio was 53% and 47%, respectively. The majority of the patients seen were adolescents (63% with ages between 12-21 years). African-American participants represented 88% and non-Hispanics 84%. After our interventions, 94% of encounters have documented pain reassessment in their electronic medical records. IN Fentanyl was first introduced in the PED in September 2020, and became the fi