Vaccines Alone Won’t Solve the Problem of Healthcare Worker Safety
Don Berwick, IHI president emeritus and senior fellow, has characterized our current healthcare system as “repair shops” where we rise to the challenge of fixing and correcting the damage for what’s broken. Often work gets accomplished without deeply understanding and addressing the underlying causes and determinants of the problem.
Do You Need to Know Six Sigma?
We’ve all heard of Six Sigma. It’s familiar terminology to any healthcare leader focused on quality improvement. Surely, however, there are some of you out there who know only that it is a methodological tool used to recognize variability, prevent error and manage change. How, exactly, does it work? Will understanding it better help you […]
Safer Together: A National Effort
As leaders, we represent more than the roles we play. We belong to a profession centered on an important calling: to care for those who put their trust in us and to model the values for which we stand. We work tirelessly to advance health for our patients and communities, and each day we recommit […]
Diagnostic Errors in the Emergency Department: A Systematic Review
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) has called diagnostic error a “blind spot” for modern medicine and improving diagnosis a “moral, professional, and public health imperative.”1 The emergency department (ED) is a known high-risk site for diagnostic error.2–7 The key decisional dilemma for this evidence review is “What are the most common and significant medical diagnostic […]
National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety: 4 Focus Areas
Improving safety has been a top priority at healthcare organizations across the country for the last two decades, but preventable harm is still an issue. To help tackle this problem, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement-convened National Steering Committee for Patient Safety released Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety earlier this fall.
Interview: William Gunnar, MD, JD, FACHE, Veterans Affairs National Center for Patient Safety
The recent release of Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety marks the latest contribution of William Gunnar, MD, JD, FACHE, to a better healthcare system. Dr. Gunnar, director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Center for Patient Safety, also is a member of the National Steering Committee for […]
ACHE, Along With IHI, AHRQ Announce National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety
The American College of Healthcare Executives today joins with members of the National Steering Committee for Patient Safety to announce the release of a National Action Plan to provide health systems with renewed momentum and clearer direction for eliminating preventable medical harm. Continue Reading→
Safety 101 Syllabus: Establish Organizational Behavior Expectations
The COVID-19 pandemic has led hospitals across the globe to rethink safety and implement new processes and protocols to protect the health of patients, visitors, staff and anyone else who might enter a healthcare organization. Such measures include creating COVID and non-COVID patient care units, building negative pressure rooms, expanding the use of PPE and […]
Safety 101 Syllabus: Select, Develop and Engage Your Board
When it comes to achieving zero harm in healthcare, there is no silver bullet solution. Leading a Culture of Safety: A Blueprint for Success does, however, outline six leadership domains that can help ensure safety remains a focus from the top down in hospitals and other healthcare settings.
Safety 101 Syllabus: Prioritize Safety in Selection and Development of Leaders
Welcome back, class. Since posting our last lesson, the COVID-19 pandemic has spread across the globe and presented the healthcare field with new, never before seen obstacles. Between the high contagiousness and rapid spread of the virus, patient surges, shortages of personal protective equipment and ventilators, and limited testing supplies, keeping staff and patients safe […]