Newsletter
Are You on Solid Footing for Patient Safety?
Feb 29, 2016
Regardless of your specialty, or where you go to work each day, the structure for keeping your patients safe is built upon a few basic pillars:
- always keeping the patient’s needs in the foreground
- communication (including documentation)
- continuous systems improvement
- acknowledging and learning from mistakes
- peer support and training
The foundation underneath those pillars is the culture in which you and your colleagues practice. Below are a few questions you might ponder to ensure that your workplace foundation is rock solid.
- What are best practices for expressing safety concerns or “stopping the line”?
- How do we track consults/referrals through to follow up?
- How do we maximize safety during patient or information handoffs?
- Am I aware of our process for disclosing errors to patients and family members?
- How do I make sure that my patients understand me (and vice versa)?
- What are we doing to identify and address symptoms of burnout within our practice?
Thinking about these questions—and discussing them with your colleagues—should bolster your confidence that you and your patients are interacting under optimal circumstances. And if you do detect opportunities for improvement, that’s an ideal chance to tap into the risk management expertise and resources available within your organization or here at CRICO.
Additional Material
Latest News from CRICO
Get all your medmal and patient safety news here.
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Utilization of Electronic Health Record Sex and Gender Demographic Fields: A Metadata and Mixed Methods Analysis
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CRICO Grants
This CRICO co-funded retroactive study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association analyzed the records of patients 18 years of age or older in the Mass General Brigham health system with a first Legal Sex entry (registration requirement) between 2018 and 2022. The study was important because "Sex and gender demographic data are widely viewed as essential to providing culturally responsive gender affirming care and facilitating research and public health interventions."
Diagnostic Errors Linked to Nearly 800,000 Deaths or Cases of Permanent Disability in U.S.
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CRICO in partnership with Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence, conducted a study that indicates misdiagnosis of disease or other medical conditions leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths and permanent disabilities each year in the U.S.
In the Wake of a New Report on Diagnostic Errors SIDM Invites Collaboration and Policy Action
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A new report by CRICO and Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence provides the first national estimate of permanent morbidity and mortality resulting from diagnostic errors across all clinical settings. The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM) works to raise awareness of the burden of diagnostic error as a major public health issue and calls for collaboration and policy action on the issue.