Today I’m participating in a workshop, “Engaging Minority Communities in Safer Healthcare,” organized by MITSS (Medically Induced Trauma Support Services), a Boston non-profit I’ve written about before.
The current speaker is Lisa O’Connor, VP of Nursing at Boston Medical Center. She just showed this four minute safety awareness video, produced by Quantros. Much of its content will be familiar to our readers here (the frequency of medical errors and hospital acquired infections), but I’m posting it here because of its good, concrete, specific actions every patient should know. That part starts around 2:30. (My highlights below.)
Empowering “teachables”:
- Your participation counts
- Learn more – get educated
- Empower yourself
- Do your research before going to the hospital or when visiting your doctor
- Understand every procedure
- Know everything about your prescribed medications
- Ask lots of questions
- It’s your life – get involved
If you want to give someone a very quick introduction to being a more cautious patient, try this quick video.
By the way, MITSS does magnificent work, helping not just families but clinicians who are involved in medical errors. We have a cultural mythology that clinicians should be perfect, and good lives can be ruined by presuming that punishment is always appropriate. MITSS founder Linda Kenney experienced a significant medical error, and the next year she and the doctor formed this wonderful organization to provide support services to people involved, and to help people learn about patient safety and quality healthcare. Their annual fundraiser dinner is November 4 in Boston – please participate.
“11 Number of Preventable Deaths in U.S. Hospitals Every Hour”
I find this statistic a but misleading. I’m not sure how ‘objective’ you can get with a statistic like that.
“Do your research before going to the hospita or when visiting your doctor”
Yes, agreed! Hope you notice your spelling mistake :)
Regards,
George
George,
The Institute of Medicine’s famous report in 2000, “To Err is Human,” said that 44,000 to 98,000 accidental deaths happen in hospitals every year. 98,000 / 365 days / 24 hours = 11.18 accidental deaths per hour.
Two separate updates in the past year said that although the exact same analysis can’t be done today (due to HIPAA regulations), specific individual measures (such as rates of central line infections) give us no reason to think things are any better today. I was cautiously skeptical for a long time but I’ve come to understand that this makes sense.
Thanks for the “L” catch. That key’s misbehaving for me on this computer. Fixed.
That’s interesting. You are more knowledgeable on the topic then I am so I will let my guard down and believe you.
It also makes me think of how often doctors are over prescribing drugs like antibiotics, thyroid hormone, etc.. This could somehow enter that statistic, ‘killing patients slowly.’