Posts Tagged ‘patient safety’
Hearing Atul Gawande speak about Checklists and Health Policy
March 22, 2011
Atul Gawande
Just returned from live tweeting of Atul Gawande at Cleveland Clinic Ideas and full of quotes and ideas. For instance, the evidence is building for use of checklists showing significant reduction in mortality and complications so that he states that if there was a drug that showed this kind of effect it would be adopted immediately, even faster than Viagra. Gawande also discussed two of his well known New Yorker articles:
- The Cost Conundrum - What a Texas town can teach us about health care
- The Hot Spotters: Can we lower medical costs by giving the neediest patients better care?
In the end, he challenged the audience and the country to find one hospital which could reduce costs while not causing harm to set a model. He predicted that in the coming hospital wars, the ones which reduced cost while maintaining quality would win and others would lose (close).
Within the provocative statements was the voice of compassion and rediscovering the soul of medicine in the complex, competitive healthcare environment of today.
Check out the twitter feed from the meeting. And his book: The Checklist Manifesto and his checklists.
Final thought – why are hospitals not advertising that they endorse and complete adopt checklists? And why would anyone not have surgery in a hospital that does not use checklists? Why take the risk when the evidence is there?
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A New Way to Promote Patient Safety – Talk to Your Doctor
February 20, 2008
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has posted a video about this novel approach – talk to your doctor. It has certainly become an issue for many patients and physicians in the rushed clinical setting. Time to slow down and really talk. Here are some of the suggestions:
- What the barriers are to good communication between patient and doctor.
- What steps you can take to make sure you understand everything your doctor is saying.
- What questions you should ask your doctor about medical tests, diagnosis, and medicines.
- How you can ask your doctor about alternative therapies.
- How you can become more comfortable asking your doctor about sensitive topics.
Besides Carolyn Clancy of the AHRQ, the other two speakers are from AARP and AAFP. Good choices.
This video would be appropriate to link to from any health information or hospital website. Such a simple intervention to try to address patient safety – why didn’t we think of it sooner.
