Patient Safety

ARQH: What Is Your Organization’s Patient Safety Culture?

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ARQH

What Is Your Organization’s Patient Safety Culture?

By Carolyn M. Clancy, MD

Ask any frontline clinician or healthcare support staff if they can identify the components that make up a “culture of patient safety,” and you might get a vague answer in response. But ask those same health providers if they feel they can speak up to report patient safety concerns without fearing retribution, and you’re likely to get very specific responses.

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Risk Management

Implementation of Program for Operating Room Staff that Emphasizes Teamwork Associated with Reductions in Surgical Deaths

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Hospitals that had operating room personnel participate in a medical team training program that incorporates practices of aviation crews, such as training in teamwork and communication, had a lower rate of surgical deaths compared to hospitals that did not participate in the program, according to a study in the October 20 issue of JAMA.

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Patient Safety

Safety Culture: Building a Culture of Safety

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Safety Culture

Building a Culture of Safety

By Dennis Tribble, PharmD, FASHP

In the 10-plus years since the inaugural publication of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) study on medical error, To Err Is Human, there has been surprisingly little progress in reducing the rate of medical error, despite the adoption of technologies specifically intended to combat medical errors. A growing number of people attribute this lack of progress to fundamental flaws in the American healthcare culture that prevent success.

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Patient Safety

Safety Huddles for a Culture of Safety

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Safety Huddles for a Culture of Safety

 

By Mary Lu Gerke, PhD, RN; Cheryl Uffelman, RN, MSN; Kim Weber Chandler, RN, BSN

When the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System in 2000, the executives and quality and patient safety staff at Gundersen Lutheran immediately started discussions around issues emphasized in the report.

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Team Training

EMR Implementation: Building a Team of Informaticists

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EMR Implementation 

Building a Team of Informaticists

By Dirk Stanley, MD, MPH

In “Clinical Informatics and the CMIO” (PSQH 2010, Jan./Feb.), I discussed the importance of clinical informatics in institutions achieving their EMR implementation goals. I talked about why you can’t “just take the paper order set and make it appear on the screen” and how you should brace yourself for organizational change when you start doing electronic order entry.

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Patient Safety

Pulse: Lucian Leape Institute Finds Medical Schools Fall Short in Teaching How to Provide Safe Care

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Pulse

Lucian Leape Institute Finds Medical Schools Fall Short in Teaching How to Provide Safe Care

The Lucian Leape Institute at the National Patient Safety Foundation has released a report that finds that U.S. “medical schools are not doing an adequate job of facilitating student understanding of basic knowledge and the development of skills required for the provision of safe patient care.” The report comes approximately 10 years after the Institute of Medicine’s landmark 1999 report, To Err Is Human, which found that 98,000 Americans die unnecessarily from preventable medical errors.

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