I’m Andrew, a PGY-3 pediatric resident in Washington DC and I’m really excited to attend the Telluride conference next week for several reasons. Some of my co-residents went last year and clearly learned and grew so much and have been really helpful in implementing some effective system change this year. One of them in particular has really taken on how the EMR works in our NICU to better lend toward safe outcomes for the tiny patients there. She recognized that a lot of errors were occurring and people were always trying to blame others when really there was a system overhaul that needed to happen.
Going through residency and being so involved in the hospital for almost 3 years, you really see a lot of people get upset when terms like ‘patient safety’ or ‘risk management’ get thrown around because people associate them with blame, litigation, etc… I think we all need to change the way we look at patient safety and think of it as a communal effort that we all must be actively engaged in carrying forth. I hope to gain more insight and bring back good ideas and strategies to create effective change in my residency program/hospital as I enter a chief resident upon return from Telluride.