11
PATIENT
SAFETY
F
ieen years aer the Institute of Medicine
published "To Err is Human", the National
Patient Safety Foundation has published a
report to address gaps le by the IOM's report and,
hopefully, save lives.
To address these issues, the NPSF convened a
panel of experts earlier this year who penned the re-
port, "Free from Harm: Accelerating Patient Safety
Improvement Fieen Years aer To Err is Human."
"Despite some significant successes, we know
that far too many people still suffer from avoidable
injuries in care," said Don Berwick, MD, presi-
dent emeritus and senior fellow at the Institute for
Healthcare Improvement, who was on both the orig-
inal IOM panel that wrote "To Err is Human" and
on the NPSF panel that created the new report. "One
of the objectives of this new work was to identify the
gaps and outline the actions to save far more lives
and avert far more harm."
Within the report, experts provide eight recom-
mendations for achieving total systems safety in
healthcare. ose tips are:
1. Ensure leaders create and sustain a culture of
safety
2. Create centralized, coordinated oversight of
patient safety
3. Make a common set of safety metrics reflecting
meaningful outcomes
4. Increase funding for patient safety and imple-
mentation science research
5. Look at patient safety across the entire care
continuum
6. Support healthcare workers
7. Partner with patients and their families
8. Make technology safe and optimized to im-
prove patient safety
e report and its executive summary are avail-
able for free download online at www.npsf.org. n
NPSF: 8 Tips to Create a Total Systems
Approach to Patient Safety
By Heather Punke
BECKER'S
7
th
Annual
Meeting
2016
April
27-30,
2016
|
Hyatt
Regency,
Chicago
Register
at
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/conference/
