In this new miniseries director of patient safety Iona Thraen examines our safety and quality improvement efforts through the clarifying lens of our coronavirus response. Part 1 focuses on patient-centered care and patient safety and proves just how much patient safety is embedded in our culture.
No one likes to be the bearer of bad news—but in health care, it’s part of the job. Fortunately, there’s a simple framework to help us get through it. Hospitalist and UACT co-director Claire Ciarkowski introduces SPIKES: a simple mnemonic for delivering bad news.
Finding evidence to change the status quo isn’t easy; thinking about evidence in terms of how it persuades—whether subjective or objective—can make it easier. Plastic surgery resident Dino Maglić and his colleagues followed their guts and saved money by improving the laceration trays used to treat patients in the emergency department.
Chronic conditions do not pause during a pandemic. When faced with delaying the care of over 1,000 patients with neurological conditions, Susan Baggaley, Neurology Vice Chair and Ambulatory Chief Value Officer, and Vivek Reddy, Neurology Vice Chair and Inpatient Chief Value Officer, rapidly developed a new virtual visit workflow.
What does it mean to take a system approach to problems? The discipline to learn as a team, patience to wade through hundreds of cases, and a diversity of perspectives. Utah’s Critical Care Senior Nursing Director Colleen Connelly, System Quality, Patient Safety, and Value Senior Director Sandi Gulbransen, and Associate Chief Medical Quality Officer Kencee Graves reflect on what they’ve learned by studying system problems with an interdisciplinary team.
In this provocative thought piece, hospitalists and system leaders Kencee Graves and Bob Pendleton explain the “team of teams” approach to becoming more nimble, responsive, and adaptable to the demands of our changing world.
Innovative teams solve problems by being curious, not by assigning blame. Environmental Services’ James Mwizerwa and Cooper Riley explain their deliberative approach to the long-standing and complex problem of getting inpatient rooms ready for the next patient.
Patients will ask three things of us over the next decade of health care improvement: help me live my best life, make being a patient easier, and make care affordable. To meet those needs health care must shift—from organizing around a patient’s biology to understanding the patient’s biography.
Utah’s Chief Medical Quality Officer Bob Pendleton describes a strategic challenge faced by many industries, including health care. We are at risk for prioritizing achievement of metrics over our purpose. He challenges us to think beyond metrics to what patients actually need from us: patient-centered, outcome-focused, affordable care.
Improvement isn’t just for one area of academic medicine. The right improvement can mean improved patient and trainee experience, reduced cost and a more engaged staff. Nurse Manager Bernice Tenort, physician Brett Einerson, and an interdisciplinary team ended up solving many challenges by tackling a long-standing problem: wait time in labor and delivery.
Chief Medical Quality Officer Bob Pendleton kicks off our week-long celebration of improvement and community during University of Utah Health Value Week.
Value Week is a unique collaborative event that brings together U of U Health’s improvement community to recognize the important and impactful work conducted throughout our organization.
