Skip to contents
In This Issue:
March 5 - 11 marks National Patient Safety Awareness Week. During this week, BWH offers staff a chance to win a gift certificate to Amazon.com by filing a safety report.
The Web-based Safety Reporting System, which went live in May 2004, is one way the hospital receives feedback from all staff regarding potential safety issues. As of January, BWHers had filed a total of 8,156 safety reports, an average of 400 per month.
"We've had a tremendous response from staff so far," said Erin Graydon-Baker, MS, RRT, patient safety manager. "We ask staff to continue reporting any potential patient safety issues-even if no patient is involved-so that we can keep on making improvements."
Improvements that stem from safety reports include a pilot of skid-free slippers on Tower 14CD to reduce the potential for patient falls; and increased availability of and education regarding the patient communication sheet, which accompanies patients when leaving the unit for tests and treatments without a floor nurse.
Staff should file a safety report if a patient is harmed, if the event reaches a patient but causes no harm or when they have a patient safety concern, even if a patient is not involved. For example, issues that staff should report include delays in diagnosis or treatment, incorrect diagnosis or treatment, difficulty determining who is covering the patient, computer problems that affect patient care, environmental safety hazards, absence of an advanced directive or difficulty locating it quickly and patient identification issues.
The Safety Reporting feature is included in Partners Applications on your computer Start menu.