Clinicians should know the patient safety risks that fall within their disciplines inside and out, make it their mission to prevent them and understand the science behind safety. All of this is a core part of clinicians' job, and patient safety is their collective responsibility, chief quality officers say. At the same time, because they are the ones on the front lines, safety leaders can also learn from clinical staff.
Becker's recently asked three CQOs what they want clinicians to know about patient safety work. Their responses are listed below in alphabetical order.
Leslie Jurecko, MD. Chief Safety, Quality and Experience Officer at Cleveland Clinic: Keeping up with scientific literature is innate for many clinicians, and many are surprised to learn that there is a science of safety and proven methods that reduce preventable harm in healthcare. It is a discipline all its own and part of highly reliable whole person care. All too often, caregivers feel that patient safety is a punitive field that just looks for human defects where, in fact, it is quite the opposite. Safety science looks at the system that surrounds the human and attempts to error-proof or error-trap that complex system — enabling the caregiver to perform their job to the best of their ability. Patient safety work shouldn't be seen as "extra work" but as fundamentally how we care for patients.
Matthew McCambridge, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Quality, Patient Safety and Acute Care Continuum Officer at Lehigh Valley Health Network (Allentown, Pa.): Nothing is more important than patient safety and it is all of our responsibility to keep our patients safe. Each discipline and clinician within that discipline should be aware of their risks in areas, be vigilant looking for patient safety issues, actively prevent patient safety events, and when seeing patient safety events, bring ideas forward so system issues can be addressed and subsequent care made safer for patients. As an example, potential patient safety matters surgical colleagues need to be aware of include wrong-side surgeries, retained foreign bodies, lost specimens, surgical site infections, injuries during surgeries and others. In the nursing patient care services world, we need to be aware of pressure injuries, falls, medication errors, telemetry issues, hospital-acquired infections, mislabeled specimens and others. Each discipline has to be aware of their "list" (psychiatry – ligature risks; hospitalist – failure-to-rescue cases; ED/anesthesia – complex airway patients), actively look to identify issues, and, as they are subject matter experts in their areas, help us correct system issues.
Tom Spiegel, MD. Vice President and Health System Chief Quality Officer at University of Chicago Medicine: Patient safety begins and ends with frontline team members. Their ideas, participation, and buy-in for any improvements are absolutely essential. Round as often as you can. Talk to the staff in the clinics, wards, ER, ORs, etc. Make it a practice to walk through clinical areas to and from your parking area or on your return from lunch. Always take time to listen to your frontlines. They will appreciate your sincerity and will share more and more ways to improve.