Patient and Family Engagement: A Patient Safety Priority
Making healthcare safer takes an ecosystem of organizations working together. To support a collaborative approach to patient safety, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) convened 27 healthcare partners who created a plan to achieve safer care: Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety.
One of the priority areas of Safer Together is Patient and Family Engagement. Involving both patients and their families in healthcare is critical to achieving patient safety. How and when information is shared with patients and families impacts the health-related decisions they make. This information sharing also affects patient outcomes. One of the Safer Together recommendations for patient and family engagement is to “Promote a culture of trust and respect for patients, families, and care partners.”¹
“The authentic engagement of patients, families, and care partners is essential for improving safety, and there is a growing evidence base of innovations that are effective in improving patient and family engagement and improving patient outcomes.”
Making Progress through Collaborative Learning
Communication and Resolution Programs (CRPs) are tools to build patient and family engagement. A CRP is a comprehensive, highly reliable process for responding to patient harm. To support the implementation of CRPs in Oregon, OPSC is partnering with the Pathway to Accountability, Compassion and Transparency (PACT), a learning collaborative dedicated to improving the way healthcare responds to patient harm. Are you ready to lead the way in building systems for safer care? If the answer is yes, please join us.
How to Get Involved
Oregon healthcare organizations are encouraged to join us in our work with the PACT Collaborative by participating in PACT’s first Oregon Cohort:
Application Deadline: September 1, 2023
Start Date: October 12, 2023
Financial Support: A limited number of partial scholarships, which will cover half of the cost of participation, are available to Oregon healthcare organizations.
Read more about the PACT Collaborative Oregon Cohort and schedule an interest call to learn more!
Other Resources
Read Disclosing medical errors: Prioritising the needs of patients and families. This is a new BMJ Quality & Safety editorial co-authored by PACT faculty leaders Dr. Thomas H. Gallagher and Dr. Evan M. Benjamin, and patient safety leader Carole Hemmelgarn.
Learn more about the informational webinars—including “Involving Patients and Families in Safety” on July 25, 2023—hosted by the Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality on behalf of the National Action Alliance to Advance Patient Safety. This is a summer series of webinars on workforce and patient safety issues.
Use Oregon’s Early Discussion and Resolution process, a tool to have an open conversation with patients and families after a harm event to work toward reconciliation and safeguard against future harm.
Reference
National Steering Committee for Patient Safety. Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety. Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), 2020:22. Accessed September 22, 2020. www.ihi.org/SafetyActionPlan