August 2009
Patient safety tools and resources
Regence is committed to the safety of our members and working toward solutions that reduce and, ultimately, eliminate incidents of preventable infections and medical errors. Numerous courses and resources are available to enhance patient safety. The following are key resources that you or your staff may find useful.
Surgical checklist
We encourage the use of a surgical checklist, such as this one recently adopted by the World Health Organization. The easy-to-follow checklist identifies critical elements that operating room surgeons and staff need to consider:
1) When the patient enters the surgical area
2) Immediately before the incision
3) Prior to the patient's transfer to the recovery area
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that by following a checklist, surgical teams reduced complications by 36% and deaths by 40%.
Learn more about how using a surgical checklist saves lives.
Patient Safety Network
The Patient Safety Network Web site, created by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is dedicated to sharing the latest in research and practice tools that facilitate patient safety in a wide variety of provider settings. The recently released Advances in Patient Safety: New Directions and Alternative Approaches provides an overview of more than 100 research-funded articles by the AHRQ and others about:
- Safety cultures
- Risk assessment
- Medication safety
- Reporting systems
- Health information technology
- Patient safety tools and practices
The American College of Physicians
Patient Safety: The Other Side of the Quality Equation was created through a grant from the AHRQ. This curriculum offers continuing medical education (CME) credit for health professionals and focuses on areas identified as essential for improving safety:
- Systems
- Cognition
- Electronics
- Communication
- Medication errors
- The role of the patient
- Idealized office design
The Medical Group Management Association
A number of patient safety tools are available to help groups assess their processes in the areas of:
- Culture
- Surgery
- Procedures
- Medications
- Management
- Personnel competency
- Handoffs and transitions
- Patient education and communication
The American Medical Association (AMA)
The AMA's toolkit of resources can help you improve care for all of your patients in all settings. The Health Literacy and Patient Safety: Help Patients Understand education kit, which qualifies for CME credit, is available from the AMA and includes vignettes on recognizing health literacy issues.