Meeting very interesting people from different health disciplines and career levels. Interacting and sharing professional and life experiences that have enriched, changed or shaped our practice around quality of care and patient safety. Communication breakdowns, hierarchy barriers, and more importantly forgetting that the patient is the centre of our practice are major barriers to provide safe patient care.
It was very important today to see face to face the huge impact that medical errors can have in a person/family’s life; it has certainly touched me and I wish that every health professional I work with got to experience and see the testimonies I have been able to experience today. Seeing a mother with two children who suffer from chronic illness and how their lives have been shaped by this, and how a mother who lost a child in a way that could have been prevented has the courage and strength to re-live this painful experience in order to teach and change in some way how we practice and how we deliver care. This for me was the highlight of the day. Anyone can make mistakes, it can happen to any of us, but we never think that in reality we are going to be in that position. I have been touched by Susan’s and Carol’s talks, they have been just life changing.
Open disclosure is another aspect of patient centered care that we sometimes fail to identify and carry out.
Openness and honesty in health care.
Teamwork around the patient as a whole. Holistic care, not just treating a condition, treating the person, their life, by taking into account their circumstances and their life story.