Patient Safety Awareness Week is an annual recognition event intended to encourage everyone to learn more about health care safety – this year scheduled for March 13-19th. The week serves as a dedicated time and platform for growing awareness about patient safety and recognizing work already being done. The Center for Patient Safety is promoting the week under the theme “Together, we are Better, Stronger, and Safer!” Patient safety is not limited to the healthcare community or confined within the four walls of a hospital or delivery site. Together means as a society, everyone has a role to create a safer community. Look no further than our collective experience over the past two years, whether getting vaccinated, wearing a mask, addressing the needs of the marginalized and underserved, or creating a physical and emotionally safe environment for those providing care, we all had a DIRECT role to play.

2022’s Patient Safety Awareness Week is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate coming together as a community to face the pandemic through safe health care practices. This is an opportunity to celebrate patient safety “bright spots” as individuals – we saved lives, were resilient and even addressed our bias toward those not cooperating toward the greater good.

Here are some examples of activities at FHCQ member organizations:

PeaceHealth
During the virtual Safety Summit, PeaceHealth will renew their focus on safety and delivering on the PeaceHealth Vision — every person receives safe, compassionate care, every time, every touch. Attendees will include caregivers and leaders systemwide — those who provide direct patient care and support those who do — who have played key roles in PeaceHealth’s quality and safety efforts. In alignment with National Patient Safety Awareness Week, the March 16 event will feature:

• Two nationally recognized speakers, who will discuss patient safety as we emerge from the pandemic and offer tools that can enhance caregiver and clinician well-being.
• Presentations and interactive breakout sessions to discuss the past, present, and future of patient and caregiver safety at PeaceHealth; and an ongoing culture of safety priorities and commitments at the local and systemwide levels.

Speakers include Dr. Tejal Gandhi, speaking on “Broadening the Definition of Harm: the Next Step in Achieving Safety,”  and Dr. Bryan Sexton, presenting on “Prioritizing Caregiver Wellbeing: Moving Forward and Upward Together.”
Feel free to contact David Allison, System Director,  System Patient Safety, PeaceHealth. dallison@peacehealth.org

Swedish Health Services

• Patient Safety Led Virtual Town Hall that includes:
  • What is Patient Safety at Swedish?
  • Video presentations of What is Psychological Safety at Swedish and Good Catch winners discussing high reliability behaviors they used to prevent harm.
  • Celebration of Safety Heroes [Safety Hero: A caregiver/provider who consistently demonstrates high reliability behaviors]
• Patient Safety Rounding with Executive Leaders of Campus
  • Review key topics of psychological safety, patient safety and high reliability tools (caregivers names submitted into raffle—for chance to win prize).
• Showcase Patient Safety on-line with daily links to new patient safety stories, videos and tools.
  Contact Jessica Yanny, Patient Safety Officer, Swedish Medical Center, Jessica.Yanny@swedish.org

Here are some other resources for Patient Safety Awareness Week

• Center for Patient Safety site: If you’re a health system, hospital, EMS agency, nursing home, home care or hospice facility, surgery center, pharmacy, medical office, or other care provider group, the Center has a FREE Toolkit for you and suggestions.
• Institute for Healthcare Improvement: has resources and suggestions.
• U.S. Military Health
• American Society for Health Care Risk Management

Steve Levy, MBA
Executive Director, Washington Patient Safety Coalition
Foundation for Health Care Quality