Patient Safety Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Patient Safety. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor. Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster. Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup. Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins. Don't even sew on a button. Let the wind have its way, then the earth that invades as dust and then the dead foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch. Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome. Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry who uses whose toothbrush or if anything matches, at all. Except one word to another. Or a thought. Pursue the authentic-decide first what is authentic, then go after it with all your heart. Your heart, that place you don't even think of cleaning out. That closet stuffed with savage mementos. Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner again. Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life and talk to the dead who drift in though the screened windows, who collect patiently on the tops of food jars and books. Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters this ruse you call necessity.
Louise Erdrich (Original Fire)
You get what you expect and you deserve what you tolerate.
Mark Graban (Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction)
no recovery from trauma is possible without attending to issues of safety, care for the self, reparative connections to other human beings, and a renewed faith in the universe. The therapist's job is not just to be a witness to this process but to teach the patient how.
Janina Fisher
To the person who has anything to conceal—to the person who wants to lose his identity as one leaf among the leaves of a forest—to the person who asks no more than to pass by and be forgotten, there is one name above others which promises a haven of safety and oblivion. London. Where no one knows his neighbour. Where shops do not know their customers. Where physicians are suddenly called to unknown patients whom they never see again. Where you may lie dead in your house for months together unmissed and unnoticed till the gas-inspector comes to look at the meter. Where strangers are friendly and friends are casual. London, whose rather untidy and grubby bosom is the repository of so many odd secrets. Discreet, incurious and all-enfolding London.
Dorothy L. Sayers (Unnatural Death (Lord Peter Wimsey, #3))
Our own attitude is that we are charged with discovering the best way of doing everything.
Mark Graban (Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction)
In the past two decades it has become widely recognized that when adults or children are too skittish or shut down to derive comfort from human beings, relationships with other mammals can help. Dogs and horses and even dolphins offer less complicated companionship while providing the necessary sense of safety. Dogs and horses, in particular, are now extensively used to treat some groups of trauma patients.10
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
Inside, Lexi saw only people on gurneys. Coughing, screaming, prostrate patients, but no doctors. She yelled for help, flapping open each curtain as she ducked through the maze of rooms. But there was no one.
Dayna Lorentz (No Safety in Numbers (No Safety in Numbers, #1))
Sometimes life doesn’t make sense. Sometimes there is no good reason for the events that take place. But most times, you’ll realize it will all make sense for a much better reason, if you’re patient enough to wait.
Brittany Burgunder (Safety in Numbers: From 56 to 221 Pounds, My Battle with Eating Disorders)
Five times was Athanasius expelled from his throne; twenty years he passed as an exile or a fugitive; and almost every province of the Roman empire was successively witness to his merit, and his sufferings in the cause of the Homoousion, which he considered as the sole pleasure and business, as the duty, and as the glory, of his life. Amidst the storms of persecution, the archbishop of Alexandria was patient of labour, jealous of fame, careless of safety; and
Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)
So what steps can a regulator take when it has established that there is a problem? In very extreme cases it can remove a drug from the market (although in the US, technically drugs usually stay on the market, with the FDA advising against their use). More commonly it will issue a warning to doctors through one of its drug safety updates, a ‘Dear Doctor’ letter, or by changing the ‘label’ (confusingly, in reality, a leaflet) that comes with the drug. Drug-safety updates are sent to most doctors, though it’s not entirely clear whether they are widely read. But, amazingly, when a regulator decides to notify doctors about a side effect, the drug company can contest this, and delay the notice being sent out for months, or even years.
Ben Goldacre (Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients)
Standing on the edge with my patients — abiding with them — means that I must harbor a true awareness that I, too, could lose my child through the play of circumstance over which I have no control. I could lose my home, my financial security, my safety. I could lose my mind. Any of us could.
Christine Montross (Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis)
My Father, the Age I Am Now Time, which diminishes all things, increases understanding for the aging. —PLUTARCH My mother was the star: Smart and funny and warm, A patient listener and an easy laugher. My father was . . . an accountant: Not one to look up to, Ask advice from, Confide in. A man of few words. We faulted him—my mother, my sister, and I, For being this dutiful, uninspiring guy Who never missed a day of work, Or wondered what our dreams were. Just . . . an accountant. Decades later, My mother dead, my sister dead, My father, the age I am now, Planning ahead in his so-accountant way, Sent me, for my records, Copies of his will, his insurance policies, And assorted other documents, including The paid receipt for his cemetery plot, The paid receipt for his tombstone, And the words that he had chosen for his stone. And for the first time, shame on me, I saw my father: Our family’s prime provider, only provider. A barely-out-of-boyhood married man Working without a safety net through the Depression years That marked him forever, Terrified that maybe he wouldn’t make it, Terrified he would fall and drag us down with him, His only goal, his life-consuming goal, To put bread on our table, a roof over our head. With no time for anyone’s secrets, With no time for anyone’s dreams, He quietly earned the words that made me weep, The words that were carved, the following year, On his tombstone: HE TOOK CARE OF HIS FAMILY.
Judith Viorst (Nearing Ninety: And Other Comedies of Late Life (Judith Viorst's Decades))
James Reason reminds us, “Errors are largely unintentional. It is very difficult for management to control what people did not intend to do in the first place.
Robert M. Wachter (Understanding Patient Safety)
twisted form of Omerta, the Sicilian code of silence, and frankly, it’s protected many a bad doctor and some true butchers.
John J. Nance (Why Hospitals Should Fly: The Ultimate Flight Plan to Patient Safety and Quality Care)
Above all, the therapist must be prepared to go wherever the patient goes, do all that is necessary to continue building trust and safety in the relationship.
Irvin D. Yalom (The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients)
You think you're lost. You think you're headed for disaster. But this isn't true. Quiet your mind. Be patient. Let go.
Brittany Burgunder (Safety in Numbers: From 56 to 221 Pounds, My Battle with Eating Disorders)
Lean is about the total elimination of waste and showing respect for people.
Mark Graban (Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction)
We start by establishing inner “islands of safety” within the body.22 This means helping patients identify parts of the body, postures, or movements where they can ground themselves whenever they feel stuck, terrified, or enraged. These parts usually lie outside the reach of the vagus nerve, which carries the messages of panic to the chest, abdomen, and throat, and they can serve as allies in integrating the trauma. I might ask a patient if her hands feel okay, and if she says yes, I’ll ask her to move them, exploring their lightness and warmth and flexibility.
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
There is no justifiable reason why any man, woman or child on this planet should ever have to endure a single day without access to nutritious food,clean water,adequate shelter,healthcare,education and safety.
R.Patient
The modern patient safety movement replaces “the blame and shame game” with an approach known as systems thinking. This paradigm acknowledges the human condition—namely, that humans err—and concludes that safety depends on creating systems that anticipate errors and either prevent or catch them before they cause harm. Such an approach has been the cornerstone of safety improvements in other high-risk industries but has been ignored in medicine until the past decade.
Robert M. Wachter (Understanding Patient Safety)
Attachment begins early but grows slowly. There are no shortcuts. Verbal guarantees of safety or nurturance carry no more weight than those for hair-replacement systems and miracle slicers. A therapist must prove trustworthy over time. Only consistent experiential demonstrations, in times of both quietude and turbulence, convince the child. Though all children love to be wined and dined, the safety, understanding, warmth, and containment of therapy are what foster trust and ultimately seduce the child patient.
Richard Bromfield (Playing for Real: Exploring the World of Child Therapy and the Inner Worlds of Children (The Master Work Series))
At the very least, to set our healthcare workers, patients, and patient caregivers up for success, we must modernize the systems that guide their work and enable their voices to be heard—especially when they see opportunities to prevent harm and improve care environments.
Heidi Raines (Shared Voices: A Framework for Patient and Employee Safety in Healthcare)
Insecure and unfulfilled people cannot help but be jealous. Only inner security and individual fulfilment as a person will reduce jealousy until, one day, it disappears. It will be replaced by a calm confidence, a steady happiness, a strong resilience, and an interesting, beautiful life. If we keep our eyes on our own path in life, we will lose the egotistical pride which frequently accompanies success and also makes us vulnerable to a fall. When things go well, we will be grateful. When they do not, we will be patient. We will accept success with ease and perspective, and failure with tolerance.
Donna Goddard (Love's Longing (Love and Devotion, #3))
No doubt there are other inferior clinics out there. Poor care, overpricing, and rude staffers can be found in every medical field. But you don’t find people using examples of it to inveigh against an entire specialty—railing against the greed of orthopedic surgeons (average 2012 salary, $315,000) or calling for surprise inspections of dentists because every year a few people die from preventable errors during dental procedures.8 Only in abortion care do the few bad providers taint all the others—and taint them so much that opponents can pass laws that would virtually shut down the entire field in the name of patient safety. No
Katha Pollitt (Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights)
In these pages, we keep returning to one foundational principle: providing the possibility of emotional/relational safety for our people, be they patients, children, partners, friends or strangers. We are able to make this offer when they are experiencing their own neuroception of safety, not continuously, but as the baseline to which we return after our system has adaptively moved into sympathetic arousal or dorsal withdrawal in response to inner and outer conditions. When we neuroceive safety, we humans automatically begin to open into vulnerability, and the movement of our "inherent treatment plan" (Sills, 2010) has a greater probability of coming forward. When we have a neuroception of threat, we adaptively tighten down at many levels, from physical tension to activation of the protective skills we have learned over a lifetime (Levine, 2010). In that state, our innate healing path will often wisely stay hidden until more favorable conditions arrive.
Bonnie Badenoch (The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology))
Don't get caught up in a vortex of 'should haves'. Regret is Fear's big sister. The one that should never be let in the door. Watch Regret from the safety of an interior window, watch her stand there on the stoop beneath the light waiting, patiently, always patiently, to be let in, her long hair prematurely gray, stiff with cold.
Andre Dubusi II
In therapy, to meet the needs of traumatized survivors of war and torture, the patient is requested to repeatedly talk about the worst traumatic event in detail while re-experiencing all emotions associated with the event. Traumatic memory, they say, is cleared by narration of whole life; from early childhood up to the present date ... this book is my therapy. I am awash with living memories.
Alfred Nestor (Uncle Hitler: A Child's Traumatic Journey Through Nazi Hell to the Safety of Britain)
Helping the identities to be aware of one another as legitimate parts of the self and to negotiate and resolve their conflicts is at the very core of the therapeutic process. It is countertherapeutic for the therapist to treat any alternate identity as if it were more “real” or more important than any other. The therapist should not “play favorites” among the alternate identities or exclude apparently unlikable or disruptive ones from the therapy (although such steps may be necessary for a limited period of time at some stages in the treatment of some patients to provide for the safety and stability of the patient or the safety of others). The therapist should foster the idea that all alternate identities represent adaptive attempts to cope or to master problems that the patient has faced. Thus, it is countertherapeutic to tell patients to ignore or “get rid” of identities (although it is acceptable to provide strategies for the patient to resist the influence of destructive identities, or to help control the emergence of certain identities at inappropriate circumstances or times). It is countertherapeutic to suggest that the patient create additional alternate identities, to name identities when they have no names (although the patient may choose names if he or she wishes), or to suggest that identities function in a more elaborated and autonomous way than they already are functioning. A desirable treatment outcome is a workable form of integration or harmony among alternate identities." Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 12:2, 115-187 (2011) DOI 10.1080/15299732.2011.537247
International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation
Wilson-Donovan wanted to move ahead as quickly as possible to clinical trials on patients, which was why it was so important to test Vicotec’s safety now before the FDA hearings in September, which would hopefully put it on the “Fast Track.” Peter was absolutely sure that the testing being concluded by Paul-Louis Suchard, the head of the laboratory in Paris, would only confirm the good news he had just been given in Geneva.
Danielle Steel (Five Days in Paris)
Many of us in healthcare entered the profession because we wanted to help, heal, and serve. At our core, we have compassion, empathy, and a drive to help people live their best lives. Recognizing and implementing actions to prevent patient and employee harm has the greatest potential effect on the quality of care delivered in our health care system, just as preventative care and wellness efforts slow or stop the progression of disease.
Heidi Raines (Shared Voices: A Framework for Patient and Employee Safety in Healthcare)
Perhaps counterintuitively, monotasking getting there can also help improve our social relationships. We think we should respond to messages from friends and family as quickly as possible—but strong friendships are generally based on qualities deeper than response time. Overall responsiveness is important, but good friends should be patient, appreciate your full attention when you have it to give, and value your safety and that of others around you.
Thatcher Wine (The Twelve Monotasks: Do One Thing at a Time to Do Everything Better)
In 2013 a study published in the Journal of Patient Safety8 put the number of premature deaths associated with preventable harm at more than 400,000 per year. (Categories of avoidable harm include misdiagnosis, dispensing the wrong drugs, injuring the patient during surgery, operating on the wrong part of the body, improper transfusions, falls, burns, pressure ulcers, and postoperative complications.) Testifying to a Senate hearing in the summer of 2014, Peter J. Pronovost, MD, professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the most respected clinicians in the world, pointed out that this is the equivalent of two jumbo jets falling out of the sky every twenty-four hours. “What these numbers say is that every day, a 747, two of them are crashing. Every two months, 9/11 is occurring,” he said. “We would not tolerate that degree of preventable harm in any other forum.”9 These figures place preventable medical error in hospitals as the third biggest killer in the United States—behind only heart disease and cancer.
Matthew Syed (Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes--But Some Do)
You understand—in my life Three—and Three alone have glimpsed—that the need to set down words—what I see, so—but words too, words mostly—words have been all my life, all my life—this need is like the Spider’s need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out—the silk is her life, her home, her safety—her food and drink too—and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew—you will say she is patient—so she is—she may also be Savage—it is her Nature—she Must—or die of Surfeit—do you understand me?
A.S. Byatt (Possession)
In patients with histories of incest, the proportion of RA cells that are ready to pounce is larger than normal. This makes the immune system oversensitive to threat, so that it is prone to mount a defense when none is needed, even when this means attacking the body’s own cells. Our study showed that, on a deep level, the bodies of incest victims have trouble distinguishing between danger and safety. This means that the imprint of past trauma does not consist only of distorted perceptions of information coming from the outside; the organism itself also has a problem knowing how to feel safe.
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
It was approaching night, the conversation having taken up the better part of a day. Out of the fragile light a fourth perezoso spoke, the olders and wisest of them, who had to descend to the forest floor on business no more than once every two or three weeks, but then required many hours to accomplish what was necessary. He said, "The truth is this. Dropped casually from the safety of our beloved branches, our shit would be merely shit. Hard and shapely as our patient nature makes it, it is still shit. But when we plant it in the ground where the jaguar walks, it becomes precious as jewels.
Lon Otto
if our attention is what we're going to do next to accomplish a specific goal (often decrease a symptom) rather than openness to what the other person is bringing to the moment, we have stepped into our left hemispheres and out of relationship- and our patient will feel that as a kind of subtle abandonment. This interchange will likely happen below the level of conscious awareness and yet lead our person to step back a bit internally, awaiting the arrival of true presence, without agenda or judgement, so that safety can arise in the space in between. At that moment, the healing power inherent in this co-organizing/co-regulating relationship arrives. We have been returning to this crucial distinction in these pages, as much as possible with ongoing compassion for the challenge we experience as we open to the right remaining consistently in the lead.
Bonnie Badenoch (The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology))
We could have dramatically reduced COVID fatalities and hospitalizations using early treatment protocols and repurposed drugs including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and many, many others.” Dr. McCullough has treated some 2,000 COVID patients with these therapies. McCullough points out that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies now show that early treatment could have averted some 80 percent of deaths attributed to COVID. “The strategy from the outset should have been implementing protocols to stop hospitalizations through early treatment of Americans who tested positive for COVID but were still asymptomatic. If we had done that, we could have pushed case fatality rates below those we see with seasonal flu, and ended the bottlenecks in our hospitals. We should have rapidly deployed off-the-shelf medications with proven safety records and subjected them to rigorous risk/benefit decision-making,” McCullough continues. “Using repurposed drugs, we could have ended this pandemic by May 2020 and saved 500,000 American lives, but for Dr. Fauci’s hard-headed, tunnel vision on new vaccines and remdesivir.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
McCullough observes that, “We could have dramatically reduced COVID fatalities and hospitalizations using early treatment protocols and repurposed drugs including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and many, many others.” Dr. McCullough has treated some 2,000 COVID patients with these therapies. McCullough points out that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies now show that early treatment could have averted some 80 percent of deaths attributed to COVID. “The strategy from the outset should have been implementing protocols to stop hospitalizations through early treatment of Americans who tested positive for COVID but were still asymptomatic. If we had done that, we could have pushed case fatality rates below those we see with seasonal flu, and ended the bottlenecks in our hospitals. We should have rapidly deployed off-the-shelf medications with proven safety records and subjected them to rigorous risk/benefit decision-making,” McCullough continues. “Using repurposed drugs, we could have ended this pandemic by May 2020 and saved 500,000 American lives, but for Dr. Fauci’s hard-headed, tunnel vision on new vaccines and remdesivir.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
All Night, All Night Rode in the train all night, in the sick light. A bird Flew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods and attitudes The other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read, Waiting, and waiting for place to be displaced On the exact track of safety or the rack of accident. Looked out at the night, unable to distinguish Lights in the towns of passage from the yellow lights Numb on the ceiling. And the bird flew parallel and still As the train shot forth the straight line of its whistle, Forward on the taut tracks, piercing empty, familiar -- The bored center of this vision and condition looked and looked Down through the slick pages of the magazine (seeking The seen and the unseen) and his gaze fell down the well Of the great darkness under the slick glitter, And he was only one among eight million riders and readers. And all the while under his empty smile the shaking drum Of the long determined passage passed through him By his body mimicked and echoed. And then the train Like a suddenly storming rain, began to rush and thresh-- The silent or passive night, pressing and impressing The patients' foreheads with a tightening-like image Of the rushing engine proceeded by a shaft of light Piercing the dark, changing and transforming the silence Into a violence of foam, sound, smoke and succession. A bored child went to get a cup of water, And crushed the cup because the water too was Boring and merely boredom's struggle. The child, returning, looked over the shoulder Of a man reading until he annoyed the shoulder. A fat woman yawned and felt the liquid drops Drip down the fleece of many dinners. And the bird flew parallel and parallel flew The black pencil lines of telephone posts, crucified, At regular intervals, post after post Of thrice crossed, blue-belled, anonymous trees. And then the bird cried as if to all of us: 0 your life, your lonely life What have you ever done with it, And done with the great gift of consciousness? What will you ever do with your life before death's knife Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate? As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls, Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feel the vast Draft of the abyss sucking him down and down, An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown: This is the way that night passes by, this Is the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss.
Delmore Schwartz
Medsupex | diabetic supplies Chicago Medsupex Our store has a multitude of products to help you get the support for your medical needs without even leaving your own home. If you're searching for the best medical supplies, look no further than our Chicago based company, Medsupex, which fits individual styles well. Believing that the best medical care begins at home, Medsupex has the broad selection of products that can help you get the medical assistance you need, right in your own home. We offer aids for daily living, bath safety, beds and accessory assistance, capital equipment, diagnostics, first aid, gloves, hot and cold therapy, incontinence, nursing supplies, orthopedic soft goods, OTC medicines, pediatrics, physical therapy, respiratory problems, re-usable textiles and skin care. We have the strictest of quality conditions when they are manufactured. This means we can guarantee your satisfaction with the product, with the additional bonus of the desire to fit your budget. Each category, from bariatric to pediatric, has a huge selection of items suitable for all types of patients. When ordering products, you can always register your gift registry, just by clicking on a few buttons diabetic supplies Chicago. If you want your own account, you can also register at My Account on the website. You can find just about anything you need for health wellness and most products can be directly delivered to your home. You can even contact us via the telephone and our support staff is available to answer any questions you may have about your particular condition or what Medsupex products will help you. Medsupex | diabetic supplies Chicago Medsupex right in your own home. Medsupex 3029 E. 92ND ST CHICAGO, IL 60617
Medsupex diabetic supplies chicago Medsupex
unique to three areas: medical, pharmaceutical and basic research. Medical ethics covers informed consent, doctor-patient confidentiality, and organ donation, to name a few. “Outsourcing Medical Studies—and Ethical Quandaries—to Africa” by David Biello delves into the lack of medical ethics boards in Africa and how this affects participant safety
Scientific American (Doing the Right Thing: Ethics in Science)
Earlier in the day, Coast Guard helicopters had arrived and volunteered to spend an hour transporting healthy people to safety (they didn’t have enough space for seriously ill patients on stretchers). “Part of the disaster was natural, but a big, big part of it was man-made and poor decision making,
Linda Marsa (Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves)
Mistakes, on the other hand, result from incorrect choices. Rather than blundering into them while we are distracted, we usually make mistakes because of insufficient knowledge, lack of experience or training, inadequate information (or inability to interpret available information properly), or applying the wrong set of rules or algorithms to a decision
Robert M. Wachter (Understanding Patient Safety)
The answers are perhaps as varied as the questions one asks, but a common theme that comes through in discussions with caregivers on the front lines and those who think a great deal about patient safety, is our failure to change our culture. What we have not done, they say, is create a “culture of safety,” as has been done so impressively in other industries, such as commercial aviation, nuclear power and chemical manufacturing. These “high-reliability organizations” are intrinsically hazardous enterprises that have succeeded in becoming (amazingly!) safe. Worse, the culture of health care is not only unsafe, it is incredibly dysfunctional. Though the culture of each health care organization is unique, they all suffer many of the same disabilities that have, so far, effectively stymied progress: An authoritarian structure that devalues many workers, lack of a sense of personal accountability, autonomous functioning and major barriers to effective communication. What is a culture of safety? Pretty much the opposite! Books have been written on the subject, and every expert has his or her own specific definition. But an underlying theme, a common denominator, is teamwork, founded on an open, supportive, mutually reinforcing, dedicated relationship among all participants. Much more is required, of course: Sensitivity to hazard, sense of personal responsibility, attitudes of awareness and risk, sense of personal responsibility and more. But those attitudes, that type of teamwork and those types of relationships are rarely found in health care organizations.
John J. Nance (Why Hospitals Should Fly: The Ultimate Flight Plan to Patient Safety and Quality Care)
McGlynn EA, Asch SM, Adams J, et al. The quality of health care delivered to adults in the United States.
Robert M. Wachter (Understanding Patient Safety)
abortion will continue. Many opponents claim to be taking the moral high ground. However, by depriving them of their civil rights, opposition to abortion hurts women and is thus unethical. It condemns women to mandatory motherhood. This attitude is not new. The systematic maltreatment of women has been institutionalized by governments and religions for several millennia.56 57 58 The clarity and cogency of the argument against abortion should be sufficient to sway public opinion. However, over the past four decades, this has not been the case. Opponents of abortion have resorted to eight murders,59,60 arson, firebombing,61 intimidation of women and clinicians,62 governmental intrusion into the physician-patient relationship,63 imposition of obstacles that deter and delay abortion, and increased costs.64,65 A broad campaign of deception and chicanery, including crisis pregnancy centers and disinformation sites on the Internet,66 has influenced decisions about abortion and its safety. Without the smokescreen about abortion safety, the ongoing attack on women and health care providers might be recognized for what it is: misogyny directed against our wives, sisters, and daughters. Ironically, the same political conservatives who oppose “big government” and its interference in our daily lives are sponsoring anti-abortion legislation mandating more intrusion of government into the private lives—and bodies—of American women. While the ethical dimensions of abortion will continue to be debated, the medical science is incontrovertible: legal abortion has been a resounding public-health success.18,19 The development of antibiotics, immunization, modern contraception, and legalized abortion all stand out as landmark public-health achievements of the Twentieth Century.
David A. Grimes (Every Third Woman In America: How Legal Abortion Transformed Our Nation)
Sylvan heard her stumbling along behind him as they made their way down the side of the mountain and every instinct he possessed shouted that he needed to go back and help her. Needed to hold her in his arms and carry her to safety. But he forced himself to go on. She doesn’t want me, doesn’t want my help or my touch. It was true and he knew it. The rejection he could handle. But the fear in her eyes… Sylvan clenched his jaw. Goddess, that she could ever think I would hurt her. The very idea was like a fist in his gut. He would rather be hurt himself, would rather be wounded a thousand times over than allow her to get a single scratch. Should have left her alone. Shouldn’t have healed her. That was what scared her the most, waking up and seeing me bending over her with my fangs out. But he had been so worried. And besides, it was impossible for him to see her hurt and not want to heal her. He had told her once, the second time they met, that as a doctor he had no emotional attachment to his patients. But it was different with her—so very different. And those few moments before she’d woken up completely, before she’d started fearing him, had been beyond compare. He
Evangeline Anderson (Hunted (Brides of the Kindred, #2))
In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced newly mandated safety labeling on statin drugs to warn doctors and patients about their potential for brain-related side effects, such as memory loss and confusion. Statin drugs also appeared to increase the risk of developing diabetes.37 In 2013, a study of several thousand breast cancer patients reported that long-term use of statins may as much as double a woman’s risk of invasive breast cancer.
Michael Greger (How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease)
In his view, people couldn’t define goodness by mindlessly applying rules.
Craig Clapper (Zero Harm: How to Achieve Patient and Workforce Safety in Healthcare)
It is in such vast gray zones that highly reliable healthcare organizations demonstrate that they possess more than just policies and procedures: they have philosophies and cultures.
Craig Clapper (Zero Harm: How to Achieve Patient and Workforce Safety in Healthcare)
organizational philosophies and cultures bear on all aspects of performance, including safety, patient experience, technical excellence, and efficiency.
Craig Clapper (Zero Harm: How to Achieve Patient and Workforce Safety in Healthcare)
Individuals and teams can’t improve in these areas simply by following new and better rules.
Craig Clapper (Zero Harm: How to Achieve Patient and Workforce Safety in Healthcare)
A more recent (2016) estimate of patient harm found that errors and omissions were the third leading cause of mortality in healthcare, accounting for 251,000 deaths each year, or one every two minutes, six seconds.3
Craig Clapper (Zero Harm: How to Achieve Patient and Workforce Safety in Healthcare)
It’s not just patients who suffer from accidental harm, but employees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports the illness and injury data that healthcare administrators submit to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).5
Craig Clapper (Zero Harm: How to Achieve Patient and Workforce Safety in Healthcare)
Hospitals cannot continue to hemorrhage. For the country as a whole, medical insurance premiums include a surcharge that pays for treating the uninsured. However, if the proportion of uninsured indigent patients exceeds a certain figure, a hospital has no choice but to close. In California alone, the heavy cost of free medicine for foreigners forced no fewer than 60 hospitals to shut down between 1993 and 2003; many others were on the verge of collapse. From 1994 to 2004, the number of hospital emergency rooms in the country as a whole dropped by more than 12 percent. In May 2010, Miami’s health care system was so strapped, it was considering closing two of its five public hospitals. This would mean laying off 4,487 employees and the loss of 581 acute-care beds. Experts explained that treating uninsured patients had stretched the system to the breaking point. Houston is a good example of a city whose hospitals are barely making ends meet. In the nation as a whole, about 15 percent of the population has no medical insurance, but Texas, with its large population of Hispanics, has the highest percentage at 24 percent. In Houston, the figure is 30 percent. The safety net cannot accommodate so many people who cannot pay. “Does this mean rationing?” asks Kenenth Mattox, chief of staff at Ben Taub General Hospital. “You bet it does.” There is such a crush at Houston’s emergency rooms that ambulances often wait for one or two hours before they can even unload patients. The record wait is six hours. Twenty percent of the time, hospitals end up sending patients to other hospitals, and some have died after being diverted. Politicians and businessmen pull strings so friends can cut in line. Americans who fall sick in Mexico do not get free treatment. The State Department warns that Mexican doctors routinely refuse to treat foreign patients unless paid in advance, and that they often charge Americans for services not rendered.
Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)
It is important that nurses and doctors know that failing to use legally required health and safety protocols with COVID-19 patients may invalidate their disability and life insurance policies.
Steven Magee
In July 2018, a safety crisis rocked the global drug supply—and seemed to prove Baker’s point. Regulators in Europe announced a harrowing discovery: the widely used active ingredient for valsartan, a generic version of the blood pressure drug Diovan, contained a cancer-causing toxin known as NDMA (once used in liquid rocket fuel). The drug had been made by the Chinese company Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals, the world’s largest manufacturer of valsartan active ingredients. In the United States, over a dozen drug manufacturers, all of which used the Chinese ingredient, recalled their products, as did dozens more manufacturers around the world. The Chinese company tried to defend itself by explaining that it had altered its production process in 2012 to increase yields of the drug, a change that had been approved by regulators. In short, the change had been made to maximize profit. Some patients had been consuming the toxin for six years. As the FDA tried to reassure consumers that the risk of developing cancer, even from daily exposure to the toxin, was extremely low, a second cancer-causing impurity was detected in the ingredients. Though the valsartan catastrophe seemed to take the FDA by surprise, it shouldn’t have. In May 2017, an FDA investigator had found evidence at the plant in Linhai, China, that the company was failing to investigate potential impurities in its own drugs, which showed up as aberrant peaks in its test results. The investigator designated the plant as Official Action Indicated, but the agency downgraded that to VAI. In short, the company was let off the hook—only to wind up in the middle of a worldwide quality scandal less than a year later. By
Katherine Eban (Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom)
There is something about a good nurse. Having a nursing license and job doesn’t make you a good nurse. Working for 30 years doesn’t make you a good nurse. It’s not about being good at starting IV’s or being best friends with all of the physicians. It’s not about having a commanding presence or knowing all of the answers to the 900 questions you get asked each shift. While all of these things are important, it’s not all there is. Being a good nurse is so much less defined and measurable than that. It isn’t measured in letters after your name, certifications, professional affiliations, or by climbing the clinical ladder. It’s something you feel when you see a good nurse care for their patients. It’s that security you see in their patient’s eyes when they walk in the room to provide care. It’s that sense of safety and security felt by the patient’s family that is so reassuring, they can finally head home for a shower and some sleep, knowing their loved one is being well cared for. Good nurses breathe instinct. They breathe discernment. Good nurses can pick out seemingly insignificant things about a patient, interpret an intricate clinical picture, somehow predict a poor outcome, and bring it to the provider’s attention, literally saving someone’s life. Did you read that? Save someone’s life. I have seen the lives of patients spared because of something that their nurse, their good nurse, first noticed. And then there’s that heart knowledge good nurses have that blows me away even more. They are those nurses who always know the right thing to say. They know how to calm an apprehensive and scared mother enough to let them take care of her son. They know how to re-explain the worst news a husband is ever going to hear because it didn’t quite make sense when the doctor said it 15 minutes ago. And they know how to comfort him when they see it click in his mind that his wife is forever gone.
Kati Kleber (Becoming Nursey: From Code Blues to Code Browns, How to Care for Your Patients and Yourself)
The obvious solution in this traditional account is renunciation: the rationality of adult maturity must triumph over the illusions of infantile fantasy. The ill-fated lover is enjoined to grow up and rededicate himself to the drab, predictable familiarity of his ordinary life! But I have found it useful in these kinds of clinical situations to reverse the question and ask, rather: How is it that in his or her primary relationship this man or woman manages to feel so safe? With such patients, it is as if the available is assumed to be completely known, always accessible, wholly predictable. Safety is presumed. But in exploring in detail the textures of such established relationships, I have invariably discovered that the sense of safety is not a given but a construction, the familiarity not based on deep mutual knowledge but on collusive contrivance, the predictability not an actuality but an elaborate fantasy. So often, in long-standing relationships that break apart, one or both partners discover with a shock that the assumptions they made about the other’s experience, the very convictions that made the other both safe and dull, were inventions, often collusively agreed upon. The husband really was not so dependable; the wife was really not so devoted. They often discover that their dull “partner” has had all sorts of secrets, very private thoughts and feelings, and, perhaps, a clandestine relationship to express them in. “She is not the person I thought she was,” is the lament of the betrayed. Precisely.
Stephen A. Mitchell (Can Love Last?: The Fate of Romance over Time (Norton Professional Books (Paperback)))
Thakur’s findings were not news to Ranbaxy’s top executives. Just ten months earlier, in October 2003, outside auditors started investigating Ranbaxy facilities worldwide. In this case, the audits had been ordered up by Ranbaxy itself. This was a common industry practice: drug companies often hired consultants to audit their facilities as a dry run to see how visible their problems were. If the consultants could find it, they reasoned, then most likely regulators could too. The fact-finding mission by Lachman Consultant Services left Ranbaxy officials under no illusion as to the extent of the company’s failings. At Ranbaxy’s Princeton, New Jersey, facility, auditors found that the company’s Patient Safety Department barely functioned and training was essentially “non-existent.” The staff had no written protocols for investigating patient complaints, which piled up in boxes, uncategorized and unreported. They had no clerical help for basic tasks like mailing out the patients’ samples for testing. “I don’t think there’s the same medicine in this medicine,” was a common refrain from patients. Even when there were investigations, they were so perfunctory and half-hearted that expiration dates were listed as “unknown,” even when they could easily have been found from a product’s lot number. An audit of Ranbaxy’s main U.S. manufacturing plant, Ohm Laboratories in New Jersey, found that the company, though required to report adverse events to the FDA, rarely did so. There was no system to capture patient complaints after hours, and no global medical officer to ensure that any potential negative consequences for patients were being monitored. The consultants from Lachman urged Ranbaxy to address these problems globally. Ranbaxy’s initial reaction to the findings was to question the number of hours, and the resulting invoice, that Lachman had sent for its work.
Katherine Eban (Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom)
There is no justifiable reason why any man woman or child on this planet should ever have to endure a day without access to nutritious food,clean water,shelter,healthcare,education and safety.
R.Patient
Safety first! Of primary concern is the patient's safety. If you are unable to assure the safety of the loved one under your care, it is a clear sign that it is time to find help to give them the best care possible. There are many options for this and even some which will still allow your loved one to opportunity to stay in their home, like alzheimers care in Santa Fe, but will require that you ask for help to meet their need. BeeHive Assisted Living Homes of Santa Fe, you can feel comfortable that your loved one is in the best hands, safe and secure.
BeeHive Assisted Living Homes of Santa Fe
n the treetops, this powerful vision was built for speed—seeing and reacting quickly. On the open grassland, it was the opposite. Safety and finding food relied upon slow, patient observation of the environment, on the ability to pick out details and focus on what they might mean. Our ancestors’ survival depended on the intensity of their attention. The longer and harder they looked, the more they could distinguish between an opportunity and a danger. If they simply scanned the horizon quickly they could see a lot more, but this would overload the mind with information—too many details for such sharp vision. The human visual system is not built for scanning, as a cow’s is, but for depth of focus.
Robert Greene (Mastery)
First Do No Harm,24
John J. Nance (Why Hospitals Should Fly: The Ultimate Flight Plan to Patient Safety and Quality Care)
I believe this particular part of 1 Corinthians 7 is an important practical resource. Each partner in marriage is to be most concerned not with getting sexual pleasure but with giving it. In short, the greatest sexual pleasure should be the pleasure of seeing your spouse getting pleasure. When you get to the place where giving arousal is the most arousing thing, you are practicing this principle. When I was doing research for this chapter, I found some old talks that Kathy and I did together. I had forgotten some of the struggles we had in our early days, and some of the notes reminded me that in those years we started to dread having sex. Kathy, in those remarks, said that if she didn’t experience an orgasm during lovemaking, we both felt like failures. If I asked her, “How was that?” and she said, “It just hurt,” I felt devastated, and she did, too. We had a great deal of trouble until we started to see something. As Kathy said in her notes:   We came to realize that orgasm is great, especially climaxing together. But the awe, the wonder, the safety, and the joy of just being one is stirring and stunning even without that. And when we stopped trying to perform and just started trying to simply love one another in sex, things started to move ahead. We stopped worrying about our performance. And we stopped worrying about what we were getting and started to say, “Well, what can we do just to give something to the other?” This concept also has implications for a typical problem that many couples experience in their marital relationship—namely, that one person wants sex more often than the other. If your main purpose in sex is giving pleasure, not getting pleasure, then a person who doesn’t have as much of a sex drive physically can give to the other person as a gift. This is a legitimate act of love, and it shouldn’t be denigrated by saying, “Oh, no, no. Unless you’re going to be all passionate, don’t do it.” Do it as a gift. Related to this are the differences that many spouses experience over what is the most satisfying context for sex. While I am not saying this is universal, I will share that, as a male, context means very little to me. That means, to be blunt, pretty much anytime, anywhere. However, I came to see that that meant I was being oblivious to something that was very important to my wife. Context? Oh, you mean candles or something? And, of course, Kathy, like so many women, did not mean “candles or something.” She meant preparing for sex emotionally. She meant warmth and conversation and things like that. I learned this, but slowly. And so we learned to be very patient with each other when it came to sex. It took years for us to be good at sexually satisfying one another. But the patience paid off. Sex
Timothy J. Keller (The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God)
Clinical handovers are high-risk situations for patient safety. Errors lead to delays in diagnosis and treatment, unnecessary tests and treatments, incorrect patient treatment, increases in the length of hospital stay, patient complaints, and malpractice claims.
Carmel Sheridan (The Mindful Nurse: Using the Power of Mindfulness and Compassion to Help You Thrive in Your Work)
Although the handover report is crucial to ensuring patient safety and continuity of care, it is surprising that most training programs neglect to focus on or develop this skill.
Carmel Sheridan (The Mindful Nurse: Using the Power of Mindfulness and Compassion to Help You Thrive in Your Work)
Graham developed his core principles, which are at least as valid today as they were during his lifetime: A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price. The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists. The future value of every investment is a function of its present price. The higher the price you pay, the lower your return will be. No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the “margin of safety”—never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be—can you minimize your odds of error. The secret to your financial success is inside yourself. If you become a critical thinker who takes no Wall Street “fact” on faith, and you invest with patient confidence, you can take steady advantage of even the worst bear markets. By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people’s mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
The report acknowledges that, “The BMGF developed a model of chloroquine penetration into tissues for malaria.”69 BMGF’s unique dosing model for the studies deliberately overestimated the amount of HCQ that necessary to achieve adequate lung tissue concentrations. The WHO report confesses that, “This model is however not validated.” Gates’s deadly deception allowed FDA to wrongly declare that HCQ would be ineffective at safe levels. The minutes of that March 13, 2020 meeting suggest that BMGF knew the proper drug dosing and the need for early administration. Yet their same researchers then participated in deliberately providing a potentially lethal dose, failing to dose by weight, missing the early window during which treatment was known to be effective, and giving the drug to subjects who were already critically ill with comorbidities that made it more likely they would not tolerate the high dose. The Solidarity trial design also departed from standard protocols by collecting no safety data: only whether the patient died, or how many days they were hospitalized. Researchers collected no information on in-hospital complications. This strategy shielded the WHO from gathering information that could pin adverse reactions on the dose.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
in predictive ability to randomized placebo-controlled trials.33 Furthermore, Risch observed that it is highly unethical to deny patients promising medications during a pandemic—particularly those which, like HCQ, have long-standing safety records.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
The moment he spoke in Telugu with them, something in the room changed. There was a new sense of comfort in the air, a sense of ease and safety. It was the feeling of assurance that came with being surrounded by their own people.
Snigdha Nandipati (A Case of Culture: How Cultural Brokers Bridge Divides in Healthcare)
This is how we know that Anthony Fauci was well aware of remdesivir’s toxicity when he orchestrated its approval for COVID patients. NIAID sponsored that project. Dr. Fauci had another NIAID-incubated drug, ZMapp, in the same clinical trial, testing efficacy against Ebola alongside two experimental monoclonal antibody drugs. Researchers planned to administer all four drugs to Ebola patients across Africa over a period of four to eight months.10,11 However, six months into the Ebola study, the trial’s Safety Review Board suddenly pulled both remdesivir and ZMapp from the trial.12 Remdesivir, it turned out, was hideously dangerous. Within 28 days, subjects taking remdesivir had lethal side effects including multiple organ failure, acute kidney failure, septic shock, and hypotension, and 54 percent of the remdesivir group died—the highest mortality rate among the four experimental drugs.13 Anthony Fauci’s drug, ZMapp, ran up the second-highest body count at 44 percent. NIAID was the primary funder of this study, and its researchers published the bad news about remdesivir in the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2019.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
Compare ivermectin’s safety record to Dr. Fauci’s two chosen COVID remedies, remdesivir (which hospital nurses have dubbed “Run-death-is-near”), and the COVID vaccines. Over 30 years, ivermectin has been associated with only 379 reported deaths, an impressive death/dose reporting ratio of 1/10,584,408. In contrast, over the 18 months since remdesivir received an EUA, about 1.5 million patients have received remdesivir, with 1,499 deaths reported (a dire 1/1,000 D/D ratio). Meanwhile, among recipients of COVID jabs in the US during the ten months following their rollout, some 17,000 deaths have occurred following vaccination, a reported D/D ratio of 1/13,250. Ivermectin, therefore, is thousands of times safer than remdesivir and COVID vaccines. The science also indicates that it is far more effective than either.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
Messieurs and Mesdames, I am a student of psychology. All through this case I have looked, not for the bad-tempered man or woman, for bad temper is its own safety valve. He who can bark does not bite. No, I have looked for the good-tempered man, for the man who is patient and self-controlled, for the man who for nine years has played the part of the under dog. There is no strain so great as that which has endured for years, there is no it resentment like that which accumules slowly.
Agatha Christie
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) seeks to integrate the best research evidence with clinical judgment and the patient’s values and preferences, while keeping in mind safety, effectiveness, and the cost of medical procedures.
Elisabeth Askin (The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the United States Health Care System, 2nd Edition)
Later abuse or other traumas did not account for dissociative symptoms in young adults.40 Abuse and trauma accounted for many other problems, but not for chronic dissociation or aggression against self. The critical underlying issue was that these patients didn’t know how to feel safe. Lack of safety within the early caregiving relationship led to an impaired sense of inner reality, excessive clinging, and self-damaging behavior: Poverty, single parenthood, or maternal psychiatric symptoms did not predict these symptoms.
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
Dr. Fishbein had entered a dangerous realm at NIAID. He was interfering with ongoing drug approvals. Tramont was angry that Dr. Fishbein was allowing concerns about patient safety to become an obstacle to the agency’s central mission of getting new drugs through the approval process with positive reviews. Tramont warned Dr. Fishbein to slow down. “You are moving too fast. You need to get to know how this place works,” Tramont told him. “We need to act more like a pharmaceutical company; we need to get patients, and get studies done.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
There are also some potential safety concerns with grafts derived from pluripotent cells. Although Parkinson’s disease is a distressing condition that causes much suffering, it does not greatly reduce lifespan, so the period of time available for the development of complications is quite long, perhaps about 20 years on average. For any cell therapy derived from pluripotent stem cells there is always an issue about the possibility of persistence of a few pluripotent cells in the graft which might give rise to teratomas. Although the animal experiments indicate that the teratoma risk is very low, the long survival time of Parkinson’s patients does make even a very small cancer risk seem significant. Moreover, the differentiation protocols for pluripotent stem cells never produce 100 per cent of the desired cell type. Even if all the pluripotent cells are gone there will certainly be other types of neuron and glial cell present and these may generate unwanted effects. For example, the uncontrolled movement problems seen in some of the foetal midbrain graft recipients has been ascribed to the presence of other types of neuron which make inappropriate connections.
Jonathan M.W. Slack (Stem Cells: A Very Short Introduction)
In the past two decades it has become widely recognized that when adults or children are too skittish or shut down to derive comfort from human beings, relationships with other mammals can help. Dogs and horses and even dolphins offer less complicated companionship while providing the necessary sense of safety. Dogs and horses, in particular, are now extensively used to treat some groups of trauma patients. 10
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
Merck maintained it had not tested either vaccine against an inert placebo in pre-approval trials, so no one could scientifically predict if the vaccines would avert more injuries or cancers than they would cause. Nevertheless, the sister FDA panel, VRBPAC, approved Gardasil—to prevent cervical cancer—without requiring proof that the vaccine prevented any sort of cancer, and despite strong evidence from Merck’s clinical trial that Gardasil could dramatically raise risks of cancer and autoimmunity in some girls.82 ACIP, nevertheless, effectively mandated both jabs. Gardasil would be the most expensive vaccine in history, costing patients $420 for the three-jab series and generating revenues of over $1 billion annually for Merck.83 That year, nine of the thirteen ACIP panel members and their institutions collectively received over $1.6 billion of grant money from NIH and NIAID. Systemic Conflicts of Interest Pharma and Dr. Fauci similarly rig virtually all the critical drug approval panels using this strategy of populating them with PIs who, bound by financial fealty to Pharma and NIAID funders, reliably approve virtually every new drug upon which they deliberate—with or without safety studies. From 1999 to 2000, Government Oversight Committee (GOC) Chairman Republican Congressman Dan Burton investigated the systemic corruption of these panels during two years of intense investigations and hearings. According to Burton, “CDC routinely allows scientists with blatant
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
Mothers Are So Wonderful We are the ones who carry babies for months We feel anxious about their safety We do our best to keep them healthy We worry the most when they are thirsty We feed them when hungry We are the ones who look after their wellbeing We ensure our kids’ lives are worthwhile We find ways to provide optimum care We are patient to see them grow older Yes, they always run to us for cover We are the ones who are called names When things go wrong with our children But given no credit when they excel in life We create conducive environments all the time We take the bullet for our loved ones We brace raging storms on their behalf We are the ones who walk miles In search of better opportunities for our offspring We sleep very late and wake up too early We guide them to achieve great things We say prayers for them to prosper God was right to entrust women with childbearing because Mothers are so wonderful
Gift Gugu Mona (From My Mother's Classroom: A Badge of Honour for a Remarkable Woman)
What’s good for you isn’t necessarily good for others—and vice versa. Consider this story: In 1985, a discovery by a major U.S. pharma firm led to a significant success in breast cancer treatment in two animal species. The phase I human trials showed no major safety concerns, but the study failed in phase II. The problem was with the cohort that was used. Half the patients had a gene that failed to metabolize the drug and they developed toxicity; the other half had a gene that metabolized the drug so quickly that it had no effect. When this problem was finally discovered in 2010 after gene sequencing of humans and of their tumors became more common, researchers realized that this beneficial drug had not helped the hundreds of thousands it could have since 1985. The point: The Human Genome Project has led to a better understanding of why something can be bad for some but good for others. That has led to scientific progress that is letting us live younger for longer.
Michael F. Roizen (The Great Age Reboot: Cracking the Longevity Code for a Younger Tomorrow)
The emotions of patients are encoded in their behavior. It’s an easy task to recognize a crying person as sad. But a compulsively attentive patient, documenting every lab result and asking well-formulated questions about antibiotic choices, is less easy to decode as anxious. I myself didn’t recognize my own anxiety at the time. I believed I was appropriately adapted to my environment. An environment that required intense vigilance and anticipation of some impending cataclysm. The casual complacency I observed in others struck me as horribly naïve. Every solicitation to “just rest” filled me with contempt. I knew what would happen if I left the watchtower untended. I would die. I believed it was entirely up to me to ensure my own safety.
Rana Awdish (In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope)
Instead of drilling a hole in the skull or strapping a device onto the body, Synchron uses the “stentrode”—a device that looks like a small tube of wire mesh, and remarkably can be implanted via a catheter, much like the stents that physicians use to treat heart patients. The stentrode is fed into the jugular vein in the neck and threaded through a blood vessel that enters the brain. The device is tuned to detect the electrical signals that travel from the brain to give instructions to the limbs and fingers to move. Those signals, relayed through Bluetooth to a device outside the body, are translated by algorithms into computer commands. CEO Thomas Oxley describes it as “bringing electronics into the brain without the need for open-brain surgery.” Four Australian patients with neurodegenerative disorders have been implanted with the stentrode and are able to email, text, and even shop for groceries using only their minds.34 Synchron has also started clinical trials in the United States. Once widescale safety and efficacy have been established, it’s not hard to imagine that even a healthy individual might want a stentrode to more seamlessly interface with technology or reach just a little closer to digital immortality.
Nita A. Farahany (The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology)
The before-after study at BWH showed that CPOE reduced all medication errors by 83% and ADEs by 17% [4]. The estimated cost saving if the system were implemented hospital-wide was $480,000 per year. The controlled study of pharmacist participation on rounds at the MGH showed a 66% reduction of ADEs caused by errors in prescribing [5]. Finally, we had evidence that systems change worked in healthcare.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
which found that nearly 4 percent of hospitalized patients suffered a serious injury, of which 14% were fatal and 69% were due to errors and were thus preventable.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
The paper also influenced the thinking of future leaders in patient safety. Within a year, Jerod Loeb , from the Joint Commission, and Mark Eppinger of the Annenberg Center decided to convene a conference on medical error . Despite the displeasure with Lundberg at the AMA , its legal counsel, Marty Hatlie , convinced the leadership to shift its efforts from tort reform to error prevention . That ultimately led the AMA to found the National Patient Safety Foundation .
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
Most importantly, however, the paper influenced Ken Shine , president of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and its Quality of Care Committee, to make safety a focus of its work in quality of care. (See Chap. 9.) The Committee’s later report To Err is Human [14] was in many ways a detailed explication of the information in Error in Medicine, amplified with patient examples and specific recommendations for policy changes. It brought to public attention what the paper brought to the profession
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
These efforts were dramatically successful: they reduced the mortality of anesthesia 90%, from 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 200,000, within a decade
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
George realized that my paper would be a red flag for many doctors, who were very sensitive to anything that might make them look bad . Their institutional arm was the AMA , which saw its primary responsibility as the defense of physicians’ pride and privilege. Naively, I thought the paper offered so much in the way of opportunity to reduce harm to patients that it would be rapidly embraced by doctors. Here was the way they could reduce harm to their patients and decrease the risk of malpractice suits.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
On the other hand, within days of the publication of Error in Medicine, I received letters from friends and others congratulating me and thanking me for the paper.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
This rate of ADEs , 6.5 for every 100 patients, was astounding! It was almost ten (10) times higher than had ever been reported. And this was at the two flagship teaching hospitals of Harvard, institutions that considered themselves the best in the country!
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
The Lehman case was a life-changing event for DFCI , which underwent a major reorganization under the leadership of Jim Conway to dramatically improve its safety and ultimately achieve the lowest medication error rate in the nation.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
Based on this evidence, the NQF endorsed bar coding , and it has since been adopted as standard practice in hospitals nationwide.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
But more was needed if patient safety was to be recognized as a true discipline. Accordingly, in 2011, NPSF established the Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety . The Board set appropriate educational and training requirements and developed a qualifying examination for its credential, Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS). In recognition that patient safety must be a team effort with broad responsibility, certification is open to interested parties across multiple disciplines. Within 4 years 1100 individuals were certified. To meet the educational needs of students and professionals, NPSF created a comprehensive online Patient Safety Curriculum. By 2018, over 5000 had taken this online course, and 3000 individuals held the CPPS credential. In
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
We established an investigative team at each hospital and selected 11 nursing units for the study at the 2 hospitals: 5 intensive care units and 6 general, non-obstetric care units. David Bates was the leader of the Brigham team and David Cullen led the MGH team.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
the NPSF rolled ahead. Patient safety was beginning to be talked about widely. In the report of the President’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry , led by Don Berwick , head of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) , reduction of error was one of six recommended national aims, and NPSF was cited. JCAHO revised their sentinel event policy to make reporting voluntary, and the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research (AHCPR) (later renamed the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) identified patient safety as a priority.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
No one knew how many people were hurt by negligent care—that is, substandard care.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
How many people were harmed by medical treatment in hospitals? What percentage was caused by errors ? By negligence ? Of those harmed by negligent care, how many sued? What were the costs of medical injury —not just for those harmed by bad care, but for all patients, including those who suffered nonpreventable injuries? How were these costs paid for? All was unknown. All was potentially knowable.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)
Adverse event rates were higher in large academic medical centers than in community hospitals, but the fraction due to negligence was much lower.
Lucian L. Leape (Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement)