Now that I have returned home from the week, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the lessons learned during our discussions.
The first two days of this week were powerful and were enhanced by the presence of the family members that had been their when lapses in medical care happened. The insight they provided us was invaluable, their interactions with different hospital systems was informative, and their lesson of disclosing early, apologizing, and keeping the patients and their families in the loop is one I’ll make sure to hold onto. Additionally, I learned much by having the faculty there providing examples from their careers as well as showing us how they learned to overcome barriers to arrive at a safer standard for patient care
I also found it helpful to learn about what steps should be taken before implementing certain tools in a hospital systems. I was already somewhat familiar with PDSA system for QI projects, but learning about heuristic evaluation inspired me to think of how I could apply it to certain peices of hardware that could improve our patient care.
Through out it all the multiple games really helped to bond our group together, encouraging us to work together in, sometimes, unconventional ways and I believe the week benefited greatly from the way so many of us were honest and open and shared our own life experiences freely.
I am appreciative of AELPS for not only providing the initial groundwork for us to base our patient safety careers off of, but also for establishing a network of like minded individuals that we can keep in contact with and return to with any questions we may have. I will be sharing the lessons I’ve learned on this week with my fellow residents, but I will also be encouraging them, as well as students and nurses, to apply for the coming years as a way to continue enhancing our dedication to patient safety here at my home institution.