Safety is Paramount
By: Shelley Collins, M.D., Chief, Hospital Medicine
Safety is of the utmost importance for the University of Florida Department of Pediatrics and UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital. As such, we have made significant strides in recent months to enhance our internal safety measures. These process improvements identify patient and staff concerns with the end goal of improving quality of care and patient experiences.
Outlined below are a few examples of the steps we’ve taken to proactively address safety as an institution.
Pediatric Dashboard
Pediatric units’ statistics, a scorecard of sorts, will be compiled, evaluated and reported to senior leadership quarterly. This will enable specific areas to take corrective action, resulting in enhanced methods.
Safety Week
We instituted our first Safety Week May 20-24, during which we held multidisciplinary workshops focusing on the overarching safety theme. Nursing staff, medical students, residents and faculty alike participated in discussions at various levels of the system.
The success of this concept has led to the implementation of a monthly Safety Day, which is being implemented immediately. Each month’s activities will revolve around a central theme, including morning report, noon conference and rounds, during which residents will be asked to identify safety concerns, leading to an inherent change in the culture of treating patients.
Safety Team
Michelle Lossius, M.D., leads our new multidisciplinary safety team which includes Katie Harlan from Quality and Dave Hudson from Nursing. Dr. Lossius will conduct safety rounds on different units weekly, She’ll then generate a report and send it to the unit’s leadership to address.
Pediatric Emergency Response Working Group
The working group will consist of many of the safety team members, but will also have expanded UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital members. This month marks the first meeting of the new group, following alterations to the hospital’s emergency planning protocols. Its mission is two-fold: 1) examine adverse events and identify how to avoid similar missteps in the future and 2) conduct emergency planning for the children’s hospital. Activities will include retroactively reviewing pediatric patient data to ascertain how specific cases were handled and proactively creating mock code curriculum.
Process improvements better identify patient and staff concerns with the end goal of improving quality of care and patient experiences.