Mission
The Next of Kin Education Project is a non-profit effort* dedicated to increasing patient care and safety in hospitals nationwide.  The Project does this by giving patient care staff the tools they need to locate an unconscious patient’s emergency contact information, perform next of kin notifications and obtain informed consent, quickly and easily.  NOKEP communicates the importance of the new law, not only to patients and their families, but to the hospitals themselves, by reducing their own legal and malpractice liability.
 
* The Next of Kin Education Project is a Project of NOKR, Inc. a 501(c)(3) organization.  Contributions to NOKEP are tax deductible.

NEW! 

      Our Seven Steps to Successful Notification System and Pilot have been so successful, that we are taking it to the next level, by rolling out the full System to hospitals nationwide.  This program will provide your Emergency Department staff members with comprehensive training and your hospital with a fully operational Next of Kin notification system and protocol.  If your facility would like to be considered for this program, please click here to download the Seven Steps Kit and indicate your interest, on the download form.

Everyone knows that timely next of kin notification is vital – especially when the patient is a victim of sudden illness or trauma and is lying in your emergency department unconscious or worse, unidentified.  Not only is it important to have a family member present to comfort the patient, but to make informed treatment decisions and to provide the medical history that many times means the difference between life and death.  Although most hospitals try to locate and notify next of kin in a reasonable amount of time, it’s easy for a thinly-stretched emergency department to put off or forget to make that important call all together.

But when that call is put off, lives are at stake, patient satisfaction is compromised and that facility has just opened itself up to unnecessary liability.  And in a growing number of states, the delay of a timely next of kin call is not only against the standard of care, it’s against state healthcare statutes.

 

That’s why we created the Seven Steps to Successful Notification Kit.  The Downloadable Kit, includes our Seven Steps to Successful Notification System and is filled with articles written by top clinical experts.  It gives hospitals and patient care staff members the tools they need to locate an unconscious patient’s emergency contact information, perform next of kin notifications and obtain informed consent, quickly and easily.  With concise, easy to follow benchmarks, the Kit has everything that hospitals need to train nurses and physicians to perform next of kin notifications quickly and easily in every situation.

Along with the System, you'll find training tools and sample chart pages that hospitals can adapt for use in their patient charts.  It was specially created to promote patient health, safety and satisfaction, while helping hospitals reduce their legal and malpractice liability. 


Background

When Hospitals began asking us the best ways to perform notifications and to comply with the new California and Illinois laws, we realized that there needed to be an easy-to-use system, to provide hospitals with the materials they need to successfully deal with challenges surrounding unconscious patients. 
 
That’s why we created the Seven Steps Information Kit.  The downloadable Kit, is filled with articles written by top clinical experts.  It gives hospitals concise, easy to follow benchmarks -- everything they need to train nurses and physicians to perform next of kin notifications quickly and easily in every situation.
 
The Kit includes our Seven Steps to Successful Notification System, training tools and sample chart pages that hospitals can adapt for use in their patient's charts.   It was specially created to promote patient health, safety and satisfaction, while helping hospitals reduce their own legal and malpractice liability.
 
To make the system even more effective, you can purchase specially designed chart pages to track an unconscious patient's progress through the notification process, giving staff members the real time data they need at every stage as well as a documented record of what steps have been taken.  Designed to be used with a hospital's current charting system, the chart pages can be used to input patient information right on the computer, giving hospitals a hard copy documented record that can be printed and put into the patient's chart.  It can also be scanned and saved as part of a computerized patient record.
 
Thanks to the Project's corporate sponsors, the Information Kit is being sent to 100,000 key executives including hospital administrators, risk managers, nurses and physicians at hospitals nationwide, free of charge.  
 
Seven Steps are also available for purchase on items that personnel continually come in contact with, like mouse pads, mugs, posters, bookmarks and screen savers.
 
Even though Seven Steps to Successful Notification Tools will protect every unconscious patient who is brought into an emergency room, our Project is specially designed to have a vital impact in two under-served communities -- senior citizens and the economically disadvantaged.
 
Statistically, senior citizens are more likely than other age groups, to end up in the emergency room, from serious illness, stroke, heart attack, accidents, Alzheimer's or dementia. Since many seniors live alone or may not spend as many hours in the workplace, they are also more likely to be brought into the hospital alone, without a spouse, friend or family member present. Currently senior citizens are 39 million strong in this country and the U.S. Census Bureau officials estimate that by 2030, that number will nearly double to 76 million.
 
Economically disadvantaged communities also have special notification needs. Not only are uninsured patients or patients without regular medical care more likely to become suddenly or seriously ill, they may also have situations that, if not handled correctly, can make NOK notification difficult. If a patient doesn't have a personal physician or insurer, their emergency contact information can be more difficult to find. Or what about patients whose family members cannot speak English, or don't have a telephone or an address?  The Project is helping hospitals nationwide bridge that gap, and better serve their community.
 
But providing hospitals with a tool kit is only one way that our Project to help you safeguard the people you love.  After Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami and the London bombings, we joined forces with other emergency specialists to bring families everywhere, steps they can take in 15 minutes or less to make all of their emergency information accessible and ready to go.
 
 
The Next of Kin Education Project is a Project of NOKR, Inc. a 501(c)(3) organization.  Contributions to NOKEP are tax deductible.
© 2007 Next of Kin Education Project                                                                                                                              Contact NOKEP