Ensuring and improving patient safety has always been of the utmost importance for hospitals.
That’s why every year in March we celebrate Patient Safety Awareness Week — an annual recognition intended to encourage everyone to learn more about health care safety. However, despite the continual focus on patient safety, medical errors do happen.
We’re 18+ months into the pandemic, but your staff may feel like it’s March 2020 again. Some of your hospitals may be dealing with a current influx of COVID-19 patients that is straining resources to the max, along with a workforce shortage. But no matter the need, through surge after surge, they’ve been there for their communities.
Earlier this month, California reached a milestone that at many times throughout the course of the past year might have seemed unattainable. The state has now “reopened” for business, retiring the color-coded tier system and relaxing social distancing and capacity restrictions. After more than 15 months of numerous public health orders, three surges of cases, countless mask and gown changes along with many sleepless nights, the COVID-19 pandemic has finally given us a little bit of breathing room.
For the past year, while much of the state has been locked down — working remotely and enjoying perhaps a slower pace of life — it’s been quite the opposite for our front-line health care workers. They stepped up, answered the call, working round the clock to care for patients, both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19. Through countless hand washings and gown changes, they had […]
With the recent resurgence of COVID-19 and hospitals stretched to capacity, it’s more important than ever to be diligent about infection prevention. While so much more is known now about the disease than it was nine months ago, one thing that we have known since the start is how to minimize the spread of COVID-19.
Now, more than ever, we must do what we can to limit the spread of COVID-19 locally and throughout the state.
“Quality is not an act; it is a habit.” – Aristotle
As patient safety and quality improvement professionals, you understand those words better than most. The work you do isn’t defined by a sales metric or accomplishment of a task, but rather by incremental improvement — your journey from providing good patient care to great patient care.
For the women and men on the front lines of healing those afflicted with coronavirus, the past several weeks have tested not only their clinical skills, but also their physical limits and their emotional fortitude.
And with many more weeks, possibly months, before they can exhale again, they need all the help they can get — now.
Those six words are more than the Hospital Quality Institute’s tagline. They’re the foundation of what we do every day and serve as a constant reminder of our goal to help you deliver the safest, highest-quality care possible. They’re the words that push us to be better than the day before — because the people you care for depend on you, and you depend on us.