Knock Out Errors the Safe Way!

Purpose:
St. Joseph's is celebrating its 125th year of safe care and service to the Houston community. To enhance the culture of safety, a Patient Safety Champion(PSC) program was launched. PSC's are clinical staff working to raise awareness, motivate colleagues and disseminate “just in time” education.

Significance:
The healthcare environment, demands on time and efficiency contribute to increased potential for errors. Healthcare horror stories places our patient population at risk by delaying decisions to seek treatment. Now is the time to re-focus efforts to improve and enhance the safe delivery of care.

Strategy and Implementation:
After a rigorous selection process, PSC's attend the “Breakfast of Champions” to review data, discuss initiatives and recognize and reward individuals leading the way in safe behaviors. PSC's facilitate identification of hazardous conditions affecting patient care and causal factors contributing to medical errors. Initial program priorities focused on improvement in fall prevention, medication safety, and medical error reporting. In collaboration with Quality and Risk departments, PSCs evaluate current processes, share best practices and dessiminate performance improvement and patient safety information. Specially designed red polo shirts bearing golden boxing gloves ensure PSCs stand out during rounds and at meetings. The PSC program encourages engagement and communicates the organization's commitment to a culture of quality and safety in a uniform manner by line level staff. This role is an honor recognizing leadership potential and safe behaviors.

Evaluation:
Program initiatives have focused on education of line level staff regarding the importance of identifying and reporting medical errors. Since the program's inception, aggregated data demonstrates a 32% increase in reported medication errors. Fall prevention is a future PSC program priority.

Implications for Practice:
Through survey, peer education and recognition, our PSC's target areas for improvement utilizing NDNQI benchmarking, HCAHPS measures and other best practice tools. Our PSCs have become well rounded bedside leaders who can impact the culture of safety through peer engagement and safe practice.