Established in 2002, Patient Safety Awareness Week is an annual education and awareness campaign for healthcare safety led by the National Patient Safety Foundation. In honor of this campaign, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality has rounded up the following 10 stories and studies on patient safety, published in March.
1. National Patient Safety Foundation is presenting two national discussions this week on addressing patient safety — a Twitter chat and a free webinar. Read more. (link above)
2. The Michigan Health & Hospital Association named cardiologist Hitinder Gurm, MD, of the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center, the winner of its MHA Keystone Center Patient Safety & Quality Leadership Award. Read more.
3. The Mayo Clinic Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and Mayo Medical Laboratories, based in Rochester, Minn., developed "The ABCs of Influenza" online flash cards to promote patient safety. Read more.
4. Recent trials that investigated the impact of long physician shifts on patient care may have been unethical and put both medical residents and patients in danger, according to Public Citizen and the American Medical Student Association. Read more.
5. The Patient Safety Movement Foundation announced 49 technology companies have signed its Open Data Pledge, a public oath to share data and promote patient safety. Read more.
6. Jennifer Lenoci-Edwards, RN, director of patient safety at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, outlined four ways to encourage healthcare workers and hospital staff to speak up about patient safety in a recent IHI Improvement Blog post. Read more.
7. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office identified three key gaps where better information could help hospital officials implement patient safety practices. Read more.
8. The CMS Quality Improvement Organization Program outlined six tips for patients and providers that can help both parties work as a team to improve care and boost safety. Read more.
9. The Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety released a series of evidence-based recommendations designed to improve health IT safety, titled "Safe Practice Recommendations for Copy and Paste," at HIMSS16. Read more.
10. Approximately one in 10 parents noticed medical errors with their child's care that physicians missed in a recent study published in JAMA, suggesting they may be an underused resource in the aggregation of medical error data. Read more.