Tejal Gandhi, MD, president and CEO of National Patient Safety Foundation spoke in a video posted on Hospitals & Health Networks Daily about the importance of instituting a culture of safety.
Here are five key quotes from Dr. Gandhi:
1. We alone at the NPSF are not going to be able to advance the safety mission, we need to be united with all the stakeholders in healthcare… patients, healthcare providers and solutions providers… everybody has to have a commitment to patient safety to advance the mission.
2. Ambulatory safety is an area that really hasn't gotten the attention it needs… at NPSF we want to highlight the fact that there are a lot of safety issues that happen once patients leave the hospital.
3. We've been talking about safety culture for 15 years, and we are really trying to focus on practical tools for people to actually change culture… one of our keynotes is on establishing a culture of respect and how you do that practically, another [track] is operational things you can implement to create that culture of safety.
4. I think we've made a lot of progress [concerning patient safety]. Fifteen years ago we weren't talking about errors the way we are talking about them now and we are much more transparent about errors… I think all of us know there is a long way for us to go still.
5. Hospital leaders absolutely have to have a strong commitment to patient safety otherwise it's not going to happen.
You can view the video here.
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