The Joint Commission Invites Eisenberg Award Nominations

• 2/24/2010
• Author: Steven Berman
• Category: The Journal Blog
• 13250 Views
• 0 Comments
• 

As you may know, The Joint Commission has recently invited nominations for the 2010 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award. Information about the awards and the and nomination process can be found at http://www.jointcommission.org/PatientSafety/EisenbergAward/ .

Every year since 2002, when John M. Eisenberg died, it has been an honored tradition for the Journal to devote space in its December issue to the recipients of the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award. For the introduction to the recipients featured in the December 2009 issue, please click here to view the article.

With the approach of autumn, I am always anxious to hear which individuals and organizations the Eisenberg Awards Panel has chosen to recognize. Through the years, we have featured interviews with a wide variety of leaders who have indeed “made significant and lasting contributions to improving patient safety and health care quality.” For example, in that first year, I had the pleasure of interviewing David W. Bates, M.D., M.Sc., who was honored for "his cutting-edge research in using information technology to measure and improve patient safety, particularly in the area of medication safety." (Dr. Bates went on to nominate two other recipients of an Eisenberg award—Jerry H. Gurwitz, M.D., and Tejal Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H.) In 2004, Kaveh G. Shojania, M.D., and Robert M. Wachter, M.D., described the evolution of the “case-based approach to educating practitioners, provider organization leaders, policy makers, and patients about patient safety issues”—for which they were recognized—in their article, “The Face of Errors.” In their effort to engage clinicians in patient safety—which was then just newly established as a subject of policy and research—they reasoned that clinicians might respond more to case studies of dramatic adverse events than they would to statistics. This case-based approach has become so commonplace that I decided to include a link to the article here for you to read (or revisit) the article. For me, it remains unique and among the most memorable papers during my tenure with the Journal.

We have also published instructive articles by the organizations that, through a specific initiative or project, “made an important contribution to patient safety and health care quality in the areas of research or system innovation.” For example, in the December 2009 issue, the Michigan Health & Hospital Association Keystone Center for Patient Safety & Quality described a quality improvement collaborative’s work on central line–associated bloodstream infections, and Mercy Hospital Anderson, Cincinnati, reported how it developed and implemented an automated early warning system to predict the patient's likelihood of deterioration.

I hope you all will identify your and your colleagues’ achievements and recent innovative work in improving quality and patient safety and share your experience with the Eisenberg Awards—and the  Journal!  (Award submissions will be due at The Joint Commission on April 12, 2010.)