Patient Safety Awareness Week

• 3/10/2010
• Author: Jim Parker
• Category: Perspectives on Patient Safety Blog
• 14304 Views
• 0 Comments
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This is Patient Safety Awareness Week, an annual observance designed to raise awareness of patient safety issues in the United States. This year’s theme underscores the critical importance of communication in providing quality health care: “Let’s Talk: Healthy Conversations for Safer Health Care.” Without quality communication, even the most perfectly executed technical skills and most advanced medical knowledge can be undone. Clear, effective communication is essential between patients and providers, among providers themselves, and in some cases between different organizations.
 
In Patient Safety Awareness Week, the emphasis is often placed on those first two words, and with good reason: Patient safety is the heart of the matter. However, we cannot forget the important third word:  Awareness.  To be aware of patient safety means more than to have heard of patient safety. Rather, it means to be ever mindful of patient safety when performing any task—or having any conversation—related to patient care. Health care providers must be focused on their patients and must actively consider the safety implications of any action, treatment, service, policy, or procedure at all times. Patient safety can never be allowed to fade into the background in favor of other personal or professional concerns. Health care providers can never forget patient safety. They must be aware to the fullest extent possible of how their action or inaction may affect a patient. This is what it truly means to “raise awareness.” 
  
In addition to its year-round dedication to patient safety, this year Joint Commission Resources is contributing an online Patient Safety Quiz, intended to help patients and families learn how they can be more involved in their own health care. 
 
Individuals who take the quiz are entered into a drawing to win a copy of one of JCR’s two consumer books: You The Smart Patient: An Insider’s Handbook for Getting the Best Treatment by Michael F. Roizen, M.D., and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D., with The Joint Commission; and the brand new The Smart Parent’s Guide to Getting Your Kids Through Checkups, Illnesses, and Accidentsby Jennifer Trachtenberg, M.D., with The Joint Commission and RealAge.
 
Both of these books are excellent resources for helping patients understand and take charge of their own care and their families’ care, including tips on how to communicate with health care providers.
 
In closing, I would like to share with you this excellent interview from the New York Times with physician, researcher, and patient safety advocate Peter Provonost, M.D., of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Innovations in Quality Patient Care in Baltimore. Dr. Provonost’s research has been cited more than once in the pages of Perspectives on Patient Safety, and he is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. Click here to read.