The article Dave Mayer shared today, Check a Box. Save a Life: How Student Leadership Is Shaking Up Health Care and Driving a Revolution in Patient Safety, is a motivating reminder that we all can can make a difference in healthcare starting today. Don Berwick’s idea of a “Sprint” to Safe Care is exciting and even more so as Twitter, YouTube, blogs and Facebook extend networks into places we all have only dreamed about going. His combined effort with Atul Gawande and students across the country to improve surgical care is summarized in the following YouTube video.
What is it you want to change most in healthcare for the good of your patients? Can even a small part of that be accomplished in 90 days? In 180 days? In a year? Why not create our own Telluride Sprint to Safety? Let’s reach out to our social and professional networks and push forward the great ideas being shared in this small mountain town, not easy to get to–but so very hard to leave once here.
Follow @paulflevy, @atul_gawande and @erictopol on Twitter for additional ideas too. Not only do they Tweet constantly about disruptive innovations in medicine and the need for change, but between these three influential healthcare leaders they have 50,000 followers–some of whom are also equally as influential. What messages from this week or your current experience do you want to share with them via the blog, Twitter or YouTube? How can we use social media to extend our reach?
Eva Luo shared the following information via email if you’re interested in looking further into the Check a Box. Save Life. effort:
If you are particularly interested in the WHO Safe Surgical Checklist and getting involved in the “Check a Box. Save a Life.” campaign, you can find out more information on this website including a Student Action Handbook with tools on how to get started: http://www.safesurg.org/student-mentors.html.
I’d like to emphasize that each organization will be starting at a different point, so it’s important to assess what the current state is before jumping to an intervention!