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In This Issue:
What’s one of the best ways to make improvements in every aspect of life? Recognize mistakes and learn from them. The same strategy applies to providing the best patient care possible.
“BWH is a national leader in quality and patient safety, but we know that preventable harm still occurs in hospitals, so we must be open when mistakes happen to ensure that we learn from them,” said Michael Gustafson, MD, MBA, senior vice president for Clinical Excellence.
On Jan. 19, BWH will launch Safety Matters, an initiative that will enhance the way the hospital communicates about patient safety. Safety Matters will include a new section on www.BWHPikeNotes.org, the BWH intranet, where materials will be available to the entire hospital community with the goal of increasing awareness of errors, patient harm and resulting process improvements. Safety Matters will feature new articles every month about specific errors along with other messages and system improvements intended to prevent future errors from occurring.
As part of Safety Matters, BWH Community Connects, the digital signage system throughout the distributed campus, also will include important patient safety messages.
“Ensuring safety is our unwavering obligation to our patients,” said Allen Kachalia, MD, medical director for Quality and Safety. “Telling difficult stories of harm through Safety Matters will help demonstrate our pledge to foster a blame-free culture of transparency and to learn from mistakes.”
Currently, the hospital receives more than 8,400 safety reports each year. With the launch of Safety Matters, hospital leaders hope that all caregivers will feel assured that reporting errors and safety concerns is the right thing to do, and that the number of reports will grow, serving to further enhance the measures BWH takes each day to provide the highest quality care for every patient.
Note: Safety Matters does not replace the current electronic safety reporting system. All BWH staff are encouraged to file confidential safety reports from any PHS workstation under Start > Partners Applications > Safety Reporting BWH