Patient Safety Awareness Week 2019 – March 10 - 16
Contact: Lynn Falcone, CEO
Cuero, Texas: During the month of March, there are many important health observances, one of which being Patient Safety Awareness Week, March 10 – 16, 2019. Cuero Regional Hospital is utilizing this opportunity to bring critical patient safety to the forefront Patient safety is a responsibility of not only healthcare employees, but of everyone, including patients.
The custom theme developed for the week is "TEAM: Together Everyone Avoids Mistakes." Denise McMahan, RN-MSN, Assistant Administrator of Cuero Regional Hospital and Hospital Safety Officer, said, "We wanted to craft a theme that was easy to recall and unified patient safety as everyone's responsibility."
According to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Patient Safety Awareness Week is an annual recognition event intended to encourage everyone to learn more about health care safety. During this week, Cuero Regional Hospital will encourage community discussions on patient safety issues and inspire action to improve the safety of the health care system – for patients and the workforce.
Per the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)'s website, preventing harm in health care settings is a public health concern. IHI believes patient safety needs to be addressed within a public health framework. Everyone interacts with the health care system at some point in life. And everyone has a role to play in advancing safe health care. Patient Safety Awareness Week serves as a dedicated time and platform for growing awareness about patient safety and recognizing the work already being done.
"While we have made great progress in the area of patients' safety at Cuero Regional Hospital, medication errors may cause as many as 400,000 deaths in the US each year according to recent studies. Medication errors and adverse events are among the most common error in both inpatient and outpatient studies," said McMahan.
The harm resulting from errors can have long-term or permanent impact on a patient's health. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality estimates that, at any time, 1 in 31 hospitalized patients has an infection acquired in the health setting.
"Patient safety is the responsibility of every staff member from the housekeeper to the physician. Some of the ways we are working to be more proactive is training our staff on the importance of clear, concise communication and working together. It is vitally important to be transparent as issues arise so that we can address the process as a team. We are also innovating in areas of patient safety that have seen the least attention, such as diagnostic error and primary care," said Lynn Falcone, CEO of Cuero Health. "We know it starts with our leaders and we are engaging them in the change by providing communication tools and encouraging innovative thinking at all levels. We want to embrace, create, and implement tools and strategies that drive safe processes in health care."
"At Cuero Regional Hospital and all of our facilities, we want to continue to foster a culture of safety. We work to embed safety into every area within a patient's care journey with the focus that our patients and those who care for them can and should be free from harm," said Denise McMahan, RN-MSN, Assistant Administrator of Cuero Regional Hospital.
For Patient Safety Awareness Week, Cuero Regional Hospital's staff will take part in additional education on patient safety and will hold a video contest, with departments creating a video on a patient safety area of focus. Videos will be shared on Cuero Regional Hospital's Facebook page and YouTube channel as one component of patient safety education. CRH will also conduct the AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) Patient Safety Survey. This survey asks the healthcare providers and staff about the extent to which their organization supports patient safety.
Cuero Regional Hospital is located at 2550 N. Esplanade in Cuero, Texas and offers an ED- Level IV Trauma Center, on-staff General Surgeon, and a TeleStroke program. For more information, please visit cuerohospital.org or call 361.275.6191.
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