MITSS Presents Annual HOPE Award to Jeanine Thomas

 

MITSS presented Jeanine Thomas, president of the MRSA Survivors Network, with this year’s HOPE Award. MITSS, or Medically Induced Trauma Support Services, Inc., is a nonprofit organization founded in 2002 whose mission is to support healing and restore hopeto patients, families, and clinicians impacted by adverse medical events. The MITSS HOPE Award, first given out in 2008, recognizes the people and organizations that support the people affected by those events.

 

Figure 1. Sanjay Malaviya, president and CEO of RL Solutions, presents Jeanine Thomas, president of the MRSA Survivors Network, with the MITSS HOPE Award.

 

Thomas founded the MRSA Survivors Network in 2003 after she became critically ill with a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection, sepsis, and Clostridium difficile. She established the organization to give support to patients with MRSA, as well as their family members and caregivers, who are not able to find support anywhere else. MRSA Survivors Network operates acrisis hotlineto answer patients’ and caregivers’ questions regarding their infection and disease. The organization answers thousands of emails, Facebook messages, and phone calls every year, primarily from North America but also from Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Thomas was also instrumental in advocating for groundbreaking legislation in Illinois that mandated screening and reporting of MRSA, saving tens of thousands of lives. Although MRSA is still a threat to patient safety, rates have decreased; invasive (life-threatening) MRSA infections that began in hospitals declined 54% between 2005 and 2011 (Dantes, 2013). As well, more than 50% of hospitals in the U.S. now screen for MRSA.

Thomas received the award at the 14th annual MITSS dinner and fundraiser, which was held at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston on Thursday, November 12, 2015. When asked what winning the HOPE Award means to her, Thomas answered, “MRSA is a secret and silent killer and needs so much awareness. I hope that winning this prestigious award will draw more attention to the ongoing MRSA epidemic and bring this disease to the forefront.”

 

Figure 2. Linda Kenney, president and executive director of MITSS, presents Lucian Leape with the first Honorary HOPE Award.

 

At the dinner, MITSS also awarded its first Honorary HOPE Award to Lucian Leape, MD, for all he has done in patient safety for patients, families, and care providers. Leape was one of the first researchers to study the causes of medical errors, leading to the 1994 publication of Error in Medicine, which called for the application of systems theory to prevent medical errors. His work ultimately led to the founding of the National Patient Safety Foundation and the Institute of Medicine’s landmark publication, To Err Is Human (Kohn, Corrigan, & Donaldson, 2000).

RL Solutions, a healthcare software company that designs solutions for patient feedback, incident reporting, risk management, infection surveillance, peer review, root cause analysis, claims management, and more, sponsors the HOPE Award. Thomas will receive a $5,000 cash prize courtesy of RL to further her patient safety work.

References

Dantes, R., Mu, Y., Belflower, R., Aragon, D., Dumyati, G., and Harrison, L. H. (2013). National burden of invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections, United States, 2011. JAMA Internal Medicine, 173(21), 1970–1978. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.10423

Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.). (2000). To err is human: Building a safer health system. Washington, DC: Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, Institute of Medicine. National Academy Press.

Leape, L. (1994). Error in medicine. JAMA, 272(23), 1851–1857. doi:10.1001/jama.1994.03520230061039