Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) is a significant concern in anesthesia practice. Evidence-based guidelines have sought to provide recommendations on identifying patients at risk for PONV and mitigating its effect with multimodal antiemetic strategies. An anesthesia department within a large teaching hospital uses the Anesthesiology Performance Improvement and Report Exchange guidelines to identify and manage patients at risk for PONV. These guidelines are intended to integrate best practices into anesthetic care and improve overall surgical outcomes. The anesthesia department currently has a PONV protocol in place that aligns with the guidelines but has not achieved their compliance benchmark. This evidence-based quality improvement project describes interventions proposed to increase compliance with the PONV protocol. To address poor PONV compliance, an anonymous survey was developed to assess anesthesia provider's current familiarity with the new PONV guidelines and identify misconceptions. A visual feedback system was implemented using a preliminary confidential list that anonymizes staff. This allowed individual providers to identify their own performance in relation to their peers in a non-punitive way. The results of this quality improvement project demonstrate that the proposed interventions increased departmental compliance.
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