We Are Patient Safety!

 March 12-18 is National Patient Safety Awareness Week. Though the healthcare industry is currently facing many challenges, we cannot lose sight of maximizing patient safety and health outcomes. Our aim of the Best Health Outcomes is our preeminent aim. In recognition of this important awareness week, I’ve invited Carolyn Candiello, our Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety, to be a guest blogger. Thank you, Carolyn, for sharing your thoughts on this important topic!

This is National Patient Safety Awareness Week, and the theme this year is “We are Patient Safety!” I like to think this epitomizes GBMC – together, we all work to provide the care we would want for our loved ones – safe, reliable, and compassionate, with the least amount of waste and the most joy for those providing the care.  

The past few years have been especially difficult, and even though COVID-19 is (somewhat) in our rearview mirror, there are still challenges – staffing shortages, increased chronic health issues, behavioral health needs, the economy, and growing concerns of violence. Our public health infrastructure is stressed seemingly to its limits. But I am an optimist because of the organization I work for and the people I have the honor to serve with.  

This past weekend as administrator on call, I rounded on hospital units.  I was inspired by the positivity and enthusiasm I encountered as I talked with staff and students.  I am incredibly grateful for the dedication and perseverance demonstrated by our team over the past three years and encouraged by the unwavering commitment I continue to see towards our patients.  We will meet these challenges in the coming months as we work together toward our vision.  

GBMC is a leader in patient safety and population health. We have spent the last decade building an infrastructure to meet chronic health issues head on in patient-centered medical homes, exceeding national benchmarks. Our culture of safety continues to strengthen, and we are laser focused on improving health outcomes, addressing the nursing shortage, and stopping workplace violence.   

We have recently upgraded our incident reporting system, the STAR tool, and I am proud to say staff members are reporting in greater numbers than ever before. This reflects a strong safety culture where employees feel safe speaking up when care might be compromised. 

In April, we will celebrate ten years of conducting Lean Management rounds, measuring incidents of patient harm each day. This includes hospital-acquired infections, complications, and serious adverse events, such as falls and pressure injuries. I am proud to report we are improving – we are better than last year at this time and are on track to achieve our goal for fiscal year 2023. We have gone more than three months without a serious hospital-acquired pressure injury and had many zero-harm months related to surgical site and other hospital-acquired infections.  There has been marked improvement in our Maryland Hospital Acquired Infections. Our primary care practices are achieving excellent results in addressing chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity and we are meeting all our Gilchrist safety goals this year for adverse events, falls, and medication errors. These improvements happen because our clinicians use the science of improvement to design, implement, and sustain the use of evidence-based standard work.  

I’m excited to report our quality and safety leaders have created some great ways to share learning this week. Be on the lookout for ways to participate in your email and in Pulse!  

If you have ideas for how we can continue to make care safer both in our healthcare system and on a national level, please reach out to me. I’d like to foster more dialogue. We will all be patients at some point in our lives. Let’s continue to work together to make things better, because after all, “We are Patient Safety.”

Thank you for all you do every day to make our system of care reliable and safe as we provide the care we would want for ourselves and for our loved ones!

I’d also like to take a moment to recognize a couple of additional departments and disciplines within our healthcare system. This week is National Pulmonary Rehab Week, so please be sure to thank our pulmonologists and respiratory therapists for the impact they make on our patients’ lives. They help patients who are suffering from lung disease acquire increased endurance, strength, and a better quality of life. Thanks to them, many of our patients are able to take on and complete daily tasks that can be strenuous to someone living with shortness of breath.

And, in honor of Healthcare Human Resources Week, I’d like to extend my gratitude to our Human Resources team for their ongoing contribution to GBMC each day as we work toward our vision of providing every patient, every time with the care we would want for our loved ones.