Awards show efforts to reduce medical errors
The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) has announced the winners of the first-ever Patient Safety Awards, which recognize practical solutions that reduce medical errors and improve patient safety. Award recipients presented their winning solutions during the "Patient Safety Initiative 2000: Spotlighting Strategies, Sharing Solutions" conference held recently in Chicago.
To address the problem of medical errors, the NPSF has been working with the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) to identify and disseminate proven, practical solutions that reduce medical errors and improve patient safety. In May of this year, the NPSF and JCAHO issued a nationwide call for abstracts outlining real world health care strategies shown to achieve these goals. As a result, 30 solutions were chosen to be presented at the conference, which was co-hosted by NPSF and JCAHO.
In addition to hosting the conference, NPSF has established Patient Safety Awards to be presented to three individuals or institutions that have demonstrated superior foresight and innovation in their approach to patient safety. Each award winner will receive $10,000.
"These three outstanding award winners exemplify the five criteria that we were looking for in our call," said Joanne Turnbull, PhD, executive director of the NPSF. "The solutions have been tested, implemented, and proven to reduce errors, are scientifically based, are practical to implement and administer, are creative and innovative and are transferable across organizations and settings. Each of the three winners has provided excellent examples of real-world, practical solutions that have helped to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety in their respective situations; and in addition, these cases offer insight into larger-scale progress in patient safety and medical error reduction."
The winner of the Janssen Patient Safety Award for Elder Care, sponsored by Janssen Pharmaceutica, was a solution presented by Christopher Koepke, PhD, social science research analyst at the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). His team’s research, titled, "Which Messages on Patient Safety Should the Federal Government Promote? HCFA Research with Medicare Beneficiaries," looked at whether widespread popular interest in medical errors can be transformed into an active public role in preventing those errors by Medicare beneficiaries. Koepke’s team found that consumer messages on reducing medical error work best if the messages: advocate a collaborative doctor-patient relationship in which patients work with, rather than challenge, health professionals; specify action to be taken, i.e., directive messages that are readily understood by patients; and clearly indicate the mode of implementation, i.e., patients need directions on how they should act on these messages.
Steven Meisel, PharmD, assistant director of pharmacy at Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, MN, was awarded the Patient Safety Award for Innovative Clinical Solutions, sponsored by 3M, for his team’s work, "An Interdisciplinary Model for Reducing Intravenous Heparin Errors." The error reduction program of heparin, a drug used in the treatment of a variety of thromboembolic conditions, was designed to reduce intravenous heparin errors in cardiac care units. Once implemented, the program helped reduce heparin errors by 66% in four months in these units, and as a result, was expanded to the other units of his institution.
The recipient of the Patient Safety Award for Patient Provider Communication Solutions, sponsored by The St. Paul, is Children’s Hospitals and Clinics in Minneapolis. Julie Morath, RN, MS, chief operating officer, presented the winning solution, "Partnering with Families: Disclosure and Trust," which focused on the manner in which an organization responds to a medical error as the way to advance a culture of safety, particularly for pediatric patients. This patient safety agenda includes: encouraging families to participate in patient care and to ask questions; complete, prompt, and truthful disclosure of information and counseling to families when a medical accident has occurred; full analysis of each accident to prevent such an event from happening again; protecting staff who promptly and appropriately report accidents to a patient’s immediate caregiver, manager, or safety office; and continuing patient safety education through the development of targeted learning packets for leadership and clinical staff, as well as information packets for patients and families.
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