Being a part of the 2017 Telluride scholars is definitely an experience that has changed my life forever, not to mention my practice as a physician. My experiences the last 48 hours have given me a whole new perspective on patient safety and i intend moving forward to be the ”change i seek”
As residents and nurses, If we have patient safety concerns, we need to speak up. If you see something, say something, that might save a life.
I find it very disheartening, the irony of harming the very people we set out to heal. Truth of the matter is a lot of people fall through the cracks in our poorly integrated health care system and they need people to speak up for them. Patient improvement should be at the core of every provider. There is always room to grow and to learn from our mistakes.
We need to form a collective memory in order to minimize repetition of the similar errors. Patient safety takes a village to enforce but to do this we need to change from a punitive culture to one of learning and sharing. This would enhance collective memory and lead to minimizing or avoiding repetition of the same errors.
I am very hopeful as I write this piece. The day will come when the health care industry will minimize avoidable errors and become as reliable as the airline industry.