Resources for Learning about Patient Safety

“Hey, Curmudge, where should I go to do a quick study on patient safety?”

“Right here.”

“No, no. If I couldn’t wait until we finished our discussions on the topic, where should I go?”

“As you know Jaded Julie, you can always start with Google; but you can save a few clicks by starting at http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Topics/PatientSafety/. You can peel the Institute for Healthcare Improvement website like an onion to dive more and more deeply into your topic of choice.”

“I suspect that there are other sites that you monitor, Curmudge.”

“Here are two more: (1) Morbidity and Mortality Rounds on the Web (http://www.webmm.ahrq.gov). Topics on this site are not nearly as ominous as they sound. Perspectives on Safety provides two full-text articles per month. (2) Patient Safety Network (http://psnet.ahrq.gov). One may access this site directly, via webmm, or as a free e-mail newsletter. The site’s archives may be browsed by safety target, approach to improving safety, error types, clinical area, target audience, and setting of care. One may also view their Patient Safety Classics, a collection of the most influential, frequently cited articles, books, and resources on patient safety.”

“And in addition…”

“In addition, I recommend that you play detective and follow leads on the net that look interesting. Don’t ignore the health care blogs that—unlike this one—are written by hands-on practitioners. There’s a ton of information out there.”

“Back to IHI, Curmudge. What’s on their Patient Safety menu? Is there a specialty of the house, or as you would say, a plat du jour?”

“We’ll talk about some examples later, Julie. It’s critical for you to know that all of the topics covered by IHI—not just Patient Safety—pertain to health care quality, and quality in health care is virtually synonymous with patient safety. So when you explore the IHI site, don’t limit yourself to Patient Safety. For example, last week we talked about standard work and reliability, and IHI was our principal resource.”

“So now can we discuss specific threats to patient safety?”

“Not so fast, Julie. This is a big topic, and there’s a lot of groundwork that we must do first. So wear your coveralls next week and be ready to build the foundation for our further discussions.”

Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon