Pat Linton, the founding CEO of North Hawaii Community Hospital, categorically stated that “The only difference between the patient and the caregiver is acuity.” What does that mean? Well, it means that whoever is standing next to the hospital bed could easily be in the bed in short order. Covid-19 and its variants remind us that no one is truly immune or safe from illness. We are all human, and in our humanness, we are all vulnerable. We have felt this collective vulnerability worldwide, but some may argue our healthcare workers have faced much higher risks as they carry the burden of their p ..read more

To a patient, safety is an assumption. The idea that they are unsafe when they are sick enough to even go to an emergency room or be admitted to a hospital, is unimaginable. Patients and families assume that the hospital is a haven of care and consideration, a place where those who care for them have their best interest in mind in every action, and they are well protected. Today, the risks that were around prior to the pandemic are still happening. But, with COVID-19, those risks are changing. We should acknowledge that the risk is lowering with the vaccine, but, the virus has mutated several ..read more

Note:  This is a popular post from 2014 that is still relevant to the critical issue of patient safety. Florence Nightingale was not only the Mother of Modern Nursing; she also was the Mother of Healthcare Design and Patient Safety. She demanded ongoing documentation of patient progress and invented the nurse call system. She actually saw all of this as nursing — taking responsibility for the sick and preventing unnecessary suffering and death. Nightingale’s work came before all of today’s technology and bureaucracy.  Simply put, every decision and practice has the pat ..read more

For the very first time ever, I was called for jury duty last week in the 2nd District Court in Washoe County, Nevada. I tried to think of some great excuse to get out of it, but, alas, none was to be had. So, I showed up on Monday, one among 45 other potential jurors. As luck would have it, I was chosen for the panel. For four hours, we were asked questions that revealed that this was a medical negligence case, and something about sepsis, and something else about patient safety protocols and hernia operations. How Important Is It to Follow Patient Safety Rules? The attorney for ..read more

Can listening to the wrong type of music cause accidents or medical errors? The Israeli Daily paper Haartetz reported this week that Warren Brodsky, Director of Music Psychology in the Department of the Arts at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, found that music effects mood and attitude which, in turn, effect driving.  He’s detailed his findings in a new book, Driving with Music: Cognitive-Behavioral Implications (Ashgate Publishing Company). The relationship between music, attitude, and behavioral outcomes remains elusive in our collective k ..read more

Global, natural, and man-made disasters have become a painfully common occurrence. In the last two years, the world has faced hurricanes and earthquakes, mass shootings, terrorists driving trucks into crowds, and a recurrence of measles, whooping-cough, and tuberculosis. Now, we have COVID-19, a virus that remains unknown while it spreads throughout communities. What is new with COVID-19 is the growing panic that has come not from information, but from misinformation and rumor. Nonetheless, the pressure is on our clinical teams whose own health and families are as much or more at risk as those ..read more

I had never heard of Germ Theory Denialism, either. When Louis Pasteur theorized that “germs” caused disease in the 19th century, he and Florence Nightingale had a rigorous debate. The belief that bad air from pollution, exhalation from the lungs of the ill, and unhealthy vapors caused disease had held since the Greeks. In fact, Nightingale’s environmental theory was based on this same belief. Thus her hospital design included well-ventilated wards, lots of sunlight, and cleanliness of patient and their environment. When John Snow, the accepted founder of epidemiology, claimed that cholera was ..read more

Hospital corridors, by design, are wide. They have to accommodate people, wheelchairs, gurneys, computers, meal carts, and all sorts of other things. They just have to be wide. The risk of being wide, however, is that there is enough room to add more equipment, such as computers on wheels (COWs). Inevitably, these COWs wander from floor to floor and multiply, creating risks for patient safety. They are simply everywhere while they also seem to belong nowhere. I often wonder if they are lost. In many hospitals, there is neither a COW room nor a COW place. They, along with all sorts of other equ ..read more

I have always wondered why patient safety is talked about by itself. As if all other procedures, policies, and practices are not about safety. And why should patient safety be separate from the patient experience? For staff, patient safety is a lot like playing in tune for a musician. Because regardless of how much technique, fluency, knowledge, years, or whatever else one can claim, if a musician doesn’t play in tune, it’s tragic — both for the music and the audience. Likewise, whatever is careless, neglected, or sloppy in a way that puts patients at risk, can lead to a tragedy. More Parallel ..read more

I am confused.  How can patients have good experiences if they do not feel safe? And, how is patient safety evidenced beyond the accidents that do not happen? Safety precautions are ever present in our daily lives.  The wet floor caution sign in a public restroom; flashing lights on the road; the warnings at the end of drug commercials. More critically for patients in the hospital, however, are the warnings and alerts for medication ordering using electronic medical records (EMRs).  Or the protocols for preventing falls that seem inconvenient because the patient seems too health ..read more