Supporting Safer Healthcare

Does just walking into your office in the morning cause anxiety?   Despite your best efforts, are you greeted by stacks of paper, an over-flowing in-box, dozens of unread emails, a blinking phone message light, and reminder sticky-notes plastered everywhere?  Did you carry work home last night in an over-stuffed briefcase, or respond to emails and phone calls on your [...]

The Ugly Truth About Credentialing and Privileging was recently featured in the May/June 2009 issue of Synergy, the journal of the National Association Medical Staff Services (NAMSS).  Since many people have asked about it, here it is again – enjoy! —————————————-  The Ugly Truth About Credentialing & Privileging - Part I Dear Doctor: If you’ve been a practicing physician for [...]

CMS and Joint Commission are taking the issue of patient restraint and seclusion seriously.  Hospitals and individual care givers must do the same,  Not just because of the regulatory agencies, but because patients deserve to feel safe, and to be treated with dignity.  That having been said, some patients need to be restrained, for their own [...]

  It happens so fast. A sudden squeal of tires, an explosion of glass fragments, and you find yourself visiting an Emergency Department, perhaps far from home.  As you lay on the narrow gurney observing various strangers hurry past, a woman in a white lab coat approaches, smiles reassuringly and says, “Hello, I’m Dr. Smith, [...]

Many comparisons have been drawn in recent years between healthcare and aviation.  Crew Resource Management training sessions are held in hospitals around the country with the intent of improving team communication and decision making.  Critics argue that standardizations possible in aviation are not possible in healthcare.  Proponents counter that many healthcare errors could be prevented through improved communication, which CRM [...]

What does Hospital Risk Management do?  Well, that depends on who you ask. Every organization assigns different responsibilities to Risk Management.  Much like Medical/Professional Staff Offices, the roles can vary considerably from organization to organization. The Yale School of Medicine / Yale New Haven Hospital posts the following about the goals of its Office of [...]

The Airbus 380 super jumbo jet, the world’s largest,  made it’s maiden commercial flight today, flying from Singapore to Sydney with 455 passengers. No doubt about it, flying would be a great deal more pleasant under these conditions: USA Today  Photo gallery from USA Today Virtual tour – Singapore Airlines

I miss the Barbados Butterfly Blog; like many of you I was a regular reader.  As I perused her insightful, educational, and frequently witty posts, I found myself hoping that if I needed emergency surgery at 3:00 a.m. someone like “Barb” would be on call.  Skilled, tough, and wildly passionate about her work.  Her posts [...]

If you’re a supervisor or manager, you know how challenging it can be to handle your responsibilities well.  Being bossy is easy; being a good boss is hard work. Being a great boss takes a combination of talent, emotional intelligence, and wisdom. In Good Boss, Bad Boss, Psychology Today writer Willow Lawson states, “a worker’s [...]

 It’s a week for celebration! It is National Medical Staff Services Awareness Week, and the second anniversary of the MSSPNexus Blog. What better way to celebrate than by hosting edition 3.07 of Grand Rounds. Welcome! Some of you may remember that last year about this time Leonard McCoy, M.D., “Bones” from the original 1960′s Star [...]