Celebrating Patient Safety Awareness Week

Written by Dr. Greg McAuliffe, Chief Medical Officer

This week is Patient Safety Awareness Week, and San Luis Valley Health is providing resources on what we are doing to ensure all of our patients are safe while we care for them.

The theme of this year’s Patient Safety Awareness Week is “United in Safety”, and we are offering resources for patients and their families.

“Primum non nocere” is a Latin term that literally means “above all do no harm.” It was, and remains, the fundamental medical precept of the delivery of healthcare as laid out by Hippocrates almost 2,500 years ago. The safe care of our patients is indeed the number one goal of San Luis Valley Health.

Providing that level of care in a very complex environment of changing technology can be challenging.  Studies show that roughly 30% of hospitalized patients have something happen to them that neither you nor I would want to happen to us. Of those patients, 6% result in a prolonged hospital stay, temporary disability, or even permanent disability. This is not the care we want to deliver at San Luis Valley Health.  We want our culture around safety to be built around several pillars:

• Patient & Family Centered Care
• Strong clinical and senior leadership
• Effective teamwork
• A very high level of professionalism and just culture
• Provide the psychological safety of our entire team to participate
• Reliable processes of care
• A system that values learning and improvement from our errors

Additionally, when we developed our Strategy Map for 2014-15, one of our strategies was to be the “Very Best in Quality and Safety”.  Our Clinical Excellence Team has been effectively using data to ensure we are on track to meet the goals we have outlined.

We would like to share a video with you on Patient Safety Week and the Josie King Foundation, which is dedicated to the prevention of patient harm from medical errors.  The foundation encourages families and patients to partner with us in our efforts to provide safer care.  If you would like a Josie King screensaver or wallpaper, click here.  The screen saver serves as a reminder that we all have the power to prevent medical errors.

Pictured: Dr. Svetlana Bresnitz, a Pediatrician, sees a smiling patient. San Luis Valley Health is committed to ensuring all patients are safe during their visit.