The National Patient Safety Foundation is proud to partner with the American Hospital Association in sponsoring the AHA-NPSF Comprehensive Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship. This year-long program provides essential training in patient safety, quality, and performance improvement.

The fellowship consists of four in-person learning sessions, periodic teleconferences, webinars, various self and organizational assessments, and individual coaching.

This curriculum is based on the 2009 paper Transforming Healthcare: A Safety Imperative from the Lucien Leape Institute at NPSF. It prepares health care leaders to guide patient safety improvement initiatives and drive transformational change within their organizations.

The fellowship framework includes a focus on foundational elements of patient safety, such as leadership roles, culture and communication, and incorporates them into four pillars of patient safety:

• Care coordination
• Patient centeredness
• Organizational culture
• Transparency and learning organization

Fellows complete an action learning project to bring real change within their organizations and demonstrate their ability to apply the concepts learned. This rigorous approach ensures that Fellows can translate knowledge and best practices learned into action within their own organizations.

Applications for the 2013-2014 are being accepted through March 15, 2013. Please visit the fellowship website for more information.

The AHA and the National Patient Safety Foundation are sponsors of this program.

Partners include: The Health Education & Research Trust, Health Forum, the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management, the American Organization of Nurse Executives and the Society of Hospital Medicine.

Among this year’s class were several members of the American Society of Professionals in Patient Safety:

Helga Brake, PharmD, CPHQ
Patient Safety Leader
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
Chicago, IL

Margaret Cousart, RN
Patient Safety Director
Tift Regional Medical Center
Tifton, GA

Ken Grubbs, MBA, RN
Director, Quality Standards
Clinical Standards Group
Hospital Corporation of America
Nashville, TN

Adele Hodlin, RN, MS, CPHQ
Assistant Vice President for Quality and Risk
Adirondack Medical Center
Saranac Lake, NY

Jennifer Kadis, MSN, RN, CPAN
Program Director, Crew Resource Management
Memorial Healthcare System
Hollywood, FL

Barbara Olson, MS, RN, FISMP
Senior Patient Safety Officer
LifePoint Hospitals
Brentwood, TN

David Shapiro, MD
Associate Director, Trauma & Critical Care
Saint Francis Hospital & Medical Center
Hartford, CT

Shorouq Zakariya, MHRM
Risk Management Specialist
King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

The AHA-NPSF Comprehensive Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship is designed to prepare the next generation of patient safety, quality, and performance improvement leaders. Over the course of one year, fellows participate in a series of learning retreats and webinars, and they design and implement an Action Learning Project with the goal of improving processes and spreading evidence-based safety practices that lead to better outcomes and performance within their organizations.

The fellowship consists of four in-person learning sessions, periodic teleconferences, various self and organizational assessments, and individual coaching.

The 2012-2013 class of fellows will be announced next month. To learn more, visit the AHA-NPSF Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship website.

The American Society of Professionals in Patient Safety recently introduced a new two-year membership option for Professional, Advocate, Student, and Affiliate-level members. Those joining the society for the first time—or those renewing a membership—can save 10 percent off the cost of the annual membership fee by joining the Society for two years.

Membership offers a diverse range of benefits, including the twice-monthly Current Awareness Literature Alert, which keeps members up to date on the latest research in patient safety; a subscription to Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare; other member publications; member discounts on webcasts and learning modules; and member pricing on professional development programs, such as new, online, Patient Safety Curriculum and the Certified Professional in Patient Safety exam.

Given the attention being paid to patient safety at the national and state levels, the two-year option is designed to encourage members to extend their commitment to learning and engaging with their peers.

The American Society of Professionals in Patient Safety was introduced in January 2011 as the first and only individual membership society with patient safety as its organizing principle. Since then, the Society has welcomed more than 1,000 members from all over the US and internationally.

For more information about membership, go to www.aspps.org.

Review an edited transcript (in reverse chronological order) [PDF format].

Communication

We shared a link to NPSF’s new video, which demonstrates the Ask Me 3 program in action, then asked, “What other questions can patients ask? Or what more can they do?” Among the suggestions:

• Be sure to ask questions of all health providers, including pharmacists, infection control personnel, and others, not just your primary care providers.
• Be sure questions are asked and answered, so they are fully understood.
• Write questions down so you don’t forget them during the visit.
• Take notes
• Bring a “second set of ears”—a family member or friend who can help you remember everything.

One participant said, given how busy clinicians are, she is sometimes reluctant to ask too many question. That led to a discussion of time constraints in the modern health landscape. According to one participant, Jerome Groopman, MD, has estimated that doctors interrupt patients within the first 18 seconds of a visit.

We asked people to share some of their favorite videos or tools for patients. Not surprisingly, the AHRQ’s patient resource, Questions Are the Answer, was widely tweeted. Participants also shared information about medication safety and the safe disposal of prescription medication.

Health Literacy

We asked if low health literacy may be a reason for a lack of engagement by some patients. One participant shared a source that says 53 percent of adults have only intermediate levels of health literacy. Participants shared links to health literacy resources:

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation resources: http://t.co/OXZAHyTA

NPSF, Words to Watch: http://www.npsf.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/AskMe3_WordsToWatch_English.pdf

Also recommended by one participant: follow @Hlth_Literacy on twitter.

Raising Awareness

Of course, one of the major goals of Patient Safety Awareness Week is to raise awareness of the issue. Someone we follow, @SusanCarr, asked what people are reading this week, and that yielded links to great articles sparked by PSAW:

Informing the Journey, Not Changing the Destination by Jim Conway on the Health Care For All blog, http://t.co/P97dB0WS

@ClaudiaNichols writing for Pilot Health Advocates,  http://t.co/YDzSnzJV

 @TrishaTorrey writing on why the word “celebrate” is the wrong word for Patient Safety Awareness Week, http://t.co/ZcPSAJIR

Trisha Torrey rightly points out that “celebrating” is not really what the week is about. “Recognizing” or “commemorating” Patient Safety Awareness Week are probably better ways to think about it.

With that in mind, we want to make sure that everyone saves the date for next year: Patient Safety Awareness Week will be March 3-9, 2013.

Who is responsible for patient safety in your organization? The obvious answer may be the chief patient safety officer or the director of quality and safety. But that’s only partly right.

Patient safety has grown to become a distinct discipline involving practitioners from diverse areas of the health care spectrum who work under engaged and involved leaders. It involves representatives of nursing, medicine, environmental services, pharmacy, and other areas, none more important than the leadership team. Last January, the National Patient Safety Foundation established the American Society of Professionals in Patient Safety (ASPPS) as a multidisciplinary community of individuals committed to advancing patient safety best practices.

“ASPPS was created as a ‘home’ for what had previously been a fragmented community,” says Diane C. Pinakiewicz, MBA, president of NPSF and of ASPPS. “In unifying the broad base of people working to improve health care safety, our goal has been to promote consistency and standard practices to help health care professionals at all levels pursue the patient safety agenda.”

Because of their influence within their organizations, health care executives play a particularly vital role in advancing patient safety.

“There is no single strategic priority more critically important to a health care leader today than to relentlessly improve patient safety and health care quality,” says Susan T. Goodwin, RN, MSN, CPHQ, FNAHQ, FACHE.   “Doing this effectively means involving people with the requisite skills and education who employ evidence-based methods to achieve measurable goals, and who stay up-to-date on latest advances.”

Goodwin, immediate past president of the National Association for Healthcare Quality and assistant VP in the Clinical Services Group at Hospital Corporation of America, joined ASPPS last year. “The profession of patient safety has emerged as a discipline that engages many from diverse backgrounds,” she says. “ASPPS provides exceptional opportunities to bring disciplinary rigor to patient safety.”

ASPPS is marking its first anniversary this month with a number of events and activities, highlighted by an audio conference on January 24 with renowned patient safety pioneer, Lucian Leape, MD, adjunct professor of health policy at Harvard School of Public Health and chairman of the Lucian Leape Institute at NPSF.

Learn more about ASPPS and how you can benefit from membership.

Visit the Society’s website for more information about the symposium and the meeting.

Take the Society’s survey on Interprofessional Education and Healthcare Simulation.

With an increasing demand for quality in health care, care providers must expand efforts to integrate patient safety concepts and deploy them in all areas, to all people in their organizations. They must be prepared to thrive in new delivery systems and care models across the continuum, while being responsive to public and private sector initiatives to broaden pay-for-performance programs.

The Lucian Leape Institute at the National Patient Safety Foundation outlined many of these challenges in its landmark 2009 paper, Transforming Healthcare: A Safety Imperative, in which it offers a new transformational model for patient safety improvement. The American Hospital Association (AHA) and the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) have adapted the components of this transformational model to create a new curriculum, the Comprehensive Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship Framework.This new approach extends the program’s traditional focus on core patient safety knowledge to embrace new topics emerging from health care delivery system transformation.

Now entering its 11th year, the AHA-NPSF Comprehensive Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship, is designed to prepare the next generation of patient safety, quality, and performance improvement leaders.

The Fellowship consists of four in-person learning sessions, periodic teleconferences, various self and organizational assessment,s and individual coaching. The yearlong program culminates with the completion of an Action Learning Project (ALP) demonstrating the Fellow’s ability to apply the concepts learned.

Applications for the 2012-2013 class of the AHA-NPSF Comprehensive Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship are now being accepted. The deadline to apply is March 15, 2012.

Read more or download the brochure and application.

If you have any questions or need assistance, call Shawn Foster at AHA,  (312) 422-2933.

Read the full article in Take Care!

“We have a fairly extensive structure for patient and family involvement,” says Yvonne Zawodny, RN, LHRM, CPHRM, assistant vice president for risk management and patient safety at Baptist Health. “We wanted to be sure that what [our patients] were saying got to the board.”

Members of Baptist Health South’s Patient and Family Advisory Council

Patient and family advisory councils are a growing trend in health care. Research shows that patients who have positive experiences with the health care system are more likely to comply with their treatment plans and have better health outcomes than those who have negative experiences. Most hospitals conduct patient surveys, but according to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the best way to institute improvements is to involve patients directly in the design and evaluation of systems that affect them.

At Baptist Health, the process began with the Quality and Safety Steering Council, a group made up of doctors, nurses, and other staff who oversee system-wide initiatives. The Steering Council chartered the creation of a system-wide Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC), which first met in April 2010. Two PFAC members serve as charter members of the Steering Council, which reports to a committee of the board of directors.

In the coming year, the structure will become even more robust as the organization fulfills its plan to have a distinct Patient & Family Advisory Council at each of its six hospitals.

Geri Schimmel, RN, MS, LHRM, director of Patient Safety Partnership at Baptist Health, says the patient and family members are vocal and active. One of their most important contributions to date has been helping to revise the system-wide Patient Safety Guide. “Their perspectives were really different from our clinical perspective,” Schimmel said. “We made significant changes as a result.”

Sandra Sosa, mother of a child who suffered an injury while undergoing care, was recruited by the organization to serve on the Steering Council and help organize the PFAC. “You’ve got to be open,” she says. “It’s a lot of hard work. We bring a different perspective as family members, so sometimes, for the clinical staff, it’s a culture shift to do things differently.”

But, she adds, “The rewarding part is to see our work come to be.”

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