Supporting Safer Healthcare

The frail, elderly patient was so pale as to be nearly invisible against the crisp white sheets.  Any ability to give voice to his thoughts had been taken away by the ventilator tubes in his throat.  The soft restraints on his wrists prevented him from dislodging those tubes, either in confusion or by design.  Other tubes silently pumped fluids in or drained them out.  During [...]

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan has named Professor Sir Liam Donaldson as WHO Envoy for Patient Safety. In this role, Sir Liam, who served as England’s Chief Medical Officer between 1998 and 2010, will help the Organization promote patient safety as a global public health priority.    

The Implementation Guide for The Joint Commission Patient Blood Management Performance Measures 2011 is now available.   Detailed specifications are provided for seven measures related to transfusions and select elective surgery patients.   The 2011 JC Patient Blood Management Implementation Guide

Hospitalized patients diagnosed with Clostridium Difficile (C Diff), Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), or other infectious diseases are usually placed in contact isolation.  The upside to that is a private room, the downside is that for long hospital stays the patient experience can feel like solitary confinement.   Hospital employees must don gowns and gloves before entering the [...]

For nearly 2,500 years physicians bled their patients in an attempt to rid them of disease. It wasn’t until early in the 20th century that transfusing donor blood into patients became a common therapeutic choice. Because the practice of blood transfusion is relatively recent, medical professionals continue to study its effects, both immediate and long [...]

Our thoughts are with our colleagues from St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin Missouri, who yesterday had to deal with the kind of major disaster every hospital employee prepares for and hopes to never experience. ABC News Report – Hospital Evacuated after Tornado http://www.stj.com/

Kevin Pho, M.D. asks, ‘Should nurses be fired for fatal medication errors?’ Some may think the answer is a no-brainer, but as Kevin points out, there are often bigger issues at stake.

March 6-12, 2011 has been designated by the National Patient Safety Foundation as Patient Safety Awareness Week. In honor of those who work in Patient Safety, a challenging and at times heart-wrenching career choice, here is a list, courtesy of the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, of items that have caused potentially serious problems for patients undergoing  MRI [...]

Human hands – a marvel of masterful design. With them we reach, grasp, work, and create. With them we comfort, arouse, touch, and heal. Their tasks can be elegant, complex, or dirty, and in the case of healthcare, are often all three. This is a reminder and a plea to wash your marvelous, elegant, healing [...]

A study suggests medical errors, job burnout and depression lead surgeons to contemplate suicide at higher rates than the general public, and they’re much less likely to seek help. Fear of losing their jobs contributes to surgeons’ reluctance to get mental health treatment, according to the study. Nearly 8,000 surgeons participated. Read the rest Surgery [...]