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Showing results for tags 'Communication'.
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Content Article
AHRQ's Re-Engineered Discharge toolkit
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Discharge
The Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) Toolkit helps re-design the discharge process using health literacy and patient safety strategies. Research showed that the RED was effective at reducing readmissions and post-hospital emergency department visits. The RED Toolkit includes templates for easy-to-understand discharge instructions and post-discharge telephone calls, and guidance on delivering the RED to diverse populations. This is part of AHRQ's health literacy improvement tools to help healthcare organisations, leaders and professionals improve health literacy. -
Content Article
AHRQ's easy-to-understand telehealth consent form
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Telehealth
AHRQ's easy-to-understand telehealth consent form is part of AHRQ's Health Literacy Improvement Tools to help healthcare organisations, leaders and professionals improve health literacy. AHRQ's telehealth consent resources include a sample telehealth consent form that is easy to understand and how-to guidance for clinicians on obtaining informed consent for telehealth. The consent form includes provisions for healthcare providers that have curtailed in-person visits due to COVID-19. Clinicians can use the easy-to-understand language from the form when they are having the consent discussion and can use the form as a checklist to make sure they have covered all the information required by informed consent rules. -
Content ArticleThe AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 2nd edition, can help primary care practices reduce the complexity of health care, increase patient understanding of health information, and enhance support for patients of all health literacy levels. Health literacy universal precautions are the steps that practices take when they assume that all patients may have difficulty comprehending health information and accessing health services. Health literacy universal precautions are aimed at: Simplifying communication with and confirming comprehension for all patients, so that the risk of miscommunication is minimized. Making the office environment and health care system easier to navigate. Supporting patients' efforts to improve their health.
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Content Article
Some personal reflections on how the varieties of human work as summarised by Steven Shorrock apply to healthcare and personal experiences within the NHS. I offer some considerations of how this type of thinking should inform the activity of those working in patient safety oversight roles where they are not in close and regular contact with staff delivering frontline services. -
Content ArticleThe World Health Organization (WHO) is actively exploring the role of compassion in quality health care. This Global Health Compassion Rounds (GHCR) highlighted the compelling evidence around compassion and quality care—not only for patients, but also for providers and health care organisations. Respondents offered their views of the implications of this evidence at national, district, and community levels of care.
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Content ArticlePhysicians and patients have concerns associated with a shift toward virtual medicine. This interview with a Dr Paul Hyman, a primary care physician, highlights how the loss of physical touch and in-person communication could negatively affect care and the patient/physician relationship.
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Content ArticleHealthcare systems are operating in an environment that is increasingly moving toward value-based payments that reward good health outcomes and patient experience. An impediment to success in this environment, however, is that both health care delivery systems and health information are extremely complicated. The level of complexity stymies many people and hinders them from making informed preventive care and self-management decisions. Health systems are finding that they cannot achieve improved patient outcomes or experiences without improving how health care professionals communicate with and support patients. Health systems have begun to respond to the mismatch between patients’ capabilities and the health literacy-related demands of the healthcare system. A new term has emerged – the health literate organisation – that describes organisations that aspire to make it easier for people to navigate, understand, and use information and services to take care of their health. Health literate organisations, in turn, need healthcare professionals who have health literacy knowledge and skills, such as being able to communicate effectively, break down health goals into manageable steps, and connect people with the resources they need to be successful Harris et al. explores health literate care in this Commentary for the National Academy of Medicine.
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Content ArticleThe Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) outlines the process in Canada if you have a question or a concern about the healthcare services you have received.
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Content ArticleIn September, Patient Safety Learning worked with Gill Phillips, Director of Nutshell Communications Ltd, to host an online workshop with staff and patients on the subject of staff safety, the theme of this year's World Patient Safety Day. Known as Whose Shoes?®, the workshop was an an intimate, highly participative event, giving participants the chance to talk openly about their personal experiences around key issues in staff safety and how they impact patient safety.
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Content Article"Healthcare systems need to act in equal measures to both enable the recovery of patients and families it has harmed, and to protect future patients.... Yet providing what is set out in the Duty of Candour to harmed patients has not been framed as providing care to make sick or injured people better and/or to minimise their pain and suffering." In this blog, Jo Hughes explains why we need to reframe the Duty of Candour and explores what needs to change.
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Content ArticleParents know better than anyone if their child is not behaving as they usually do or seem different in some way. Studies have shown that caregivers are often the first people to spot changes in the health of their child, even when in a clinical environment. You should feel able to raise any concerns if you think something is ‘just not right’ with your child. Great Ormond Street Hospital has produced guidance on what to look out for and how to raise a concern if you are worried about your child when in hospital.
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Content ArticleWhat Your Patient Is Thinking (WYPIT) is a BMJ series led and edited by patients and carers. The articles are written by patients and carers and are a key part of The BMJ’s campaign to increase partnership with patients and public in healthcare. They contain messages that are thought provoking, and challenging for clinical readers of The BMJ, who mainly consist of doctors from across the world. Articles can be about any aspect of patient or carer experiences. This might include what it is like for you to live with your condition or as a carer or your experience of an appointment or procedure. This might be in relation to a single healthcare appointment to those from a lifetime of managing a long term health condition. It is important for the piece to include lessons for doctors. They can focus on a particular aspect of care or treatment, offer a new angle on a familiar situation, or ask controversial questions from the patient or carer's perspective. They can be triggered by good or bad experiences but all of them should give healthcare professionals and, or policy makers practical things that they can do differently tomorrow as a result of reading the article. The BMJ patient and clinical editors will work with you to develop your piece and to suggest specific questions to prompt reflection and action from the readership, that follow from the key points of your article. Guidance if you would like to contribute to the "What Your Patient is Thinking" series.
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Content ArticleThe health literacy field has evolved over several decades. Its initial focus was on individuals who had poor literacy skills. Now there is a broad recognition that everyone—not just those with limited literacy—face challenges in understanding health information and navigating the healthcare system. Acknowledging that the healthcare system is overly complex, healthcare organisations have started to take responsibility to ensure that everyone, especially the vulnerable, is able to find, understand, and use health information and services. The Agency for Healthcare Research Quality (AHRQ) provides national health literacy leadership. AHRQ’s health literacy work spans from developing improvement tools, to designing professional training and education, to funding and synthesising health literacy research. You can find health literacy improvement tools, educational and training, and publications on the AHRQ Health Literacy website.
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Content ArticleAll human activity, along with associated emergent problematic situations and opportunities, is embedded in context. The ‘context’ is, however, a a melange of different contexts. In our attempts at understanding and intervening, rarely do we spend much time trying to understand context, especially as it applies to the current situation, and how history has influenced where we are. Instead, we tend to: a) make assumptions about context, but not make these explicit, resulting in different unspoken and untested assumptions; b) limit contextual analysis to proximal, ‘obvious’ or uncontroversial aspects; or c) jump to a potential solution (or a way to realise an opportunity), shortly followed by planning for this intervention (which has the important function of helping us to feel in control, thus relieving our anxiety – at least temporarily). An approach Steven Shorrock has found useful is to spend time considering contextual influences (e.g., on decision making, at multiple levels of organisations) on problematic situations or potential solutions, more explicitly. He shares this in his latest blog.
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Content Article
Rethinking Patient Safety: Maternity safety (4 October 2020)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Maternity
Suzette Woodward reflects on the recent reports and research into maternal safety and why we need to shift to a Safety II approach. -
Content ArticleAlthough airway safety is known to be one of the key components in safe care, thousands of patients lose their lives each year to poor airway management and unplanned extubations. In this Patient Safety Movement webinar, the team discusses starting an unplanned extubation project without buy-in from others, multi-institutional collaboration, pushback from leaders, colleagues, or other organisations, the future of interventions, clinicians who have experience with unplanned extubations as key advocates, and cross-checking pediatric and adult safety efforts. The panel ends with Drew Hughes’ story and the team emphasises taking a moment to ground yourself in your practice and the importance of speaking up when you think the patient is at risk.
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Content ArticleInfographic from the Patient Safety Movement on what is needed when a patient is harmed and why we need to involve patients and families throughout the process.
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Content ArticleThe Association of Anaesthetists has published two posters highlighting what to do if you see unprofessional behaviours to make hospitals safer for patients and staff.
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Content ArticleSteve Turner and colleagues have been working on ways to put people in charge of their own healthcare. Nowhere is this more important than for people with a variety of conditions or illnesses. Their approach involves people attending a group session on medicines, and then having the option of reviewing their medicines individually in a 3/4-hour session with two health professionals (e.g. a prescriber and a pharmacist). They provide people with their own notes in the form of a written action plan, which they can share with clinicians. Benefits identified to date include improved adherence with medicines; improved quality of life; reduced unnecessary medicines; identification and actions on previously unreported patient safety issues; a potential reduction in ‘bouncing’ referrals, less missing information and fewer unnecessary contacts with services. Steve explains more about Patient Led Clinical Education© and Patient Led Clinical Medicines Review™ in this blog.
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Content ArticleThe World Health Organization designated September 17 as World Patient Safety Day — a day, every year, to raise awareness of healthcare safety and reiterate its importance. This year the Patient Safety Movement hosted a four-hour virtual event as part of their #uniteforsafecare public awareness campaign. They organised the event to bring the public into the fold as well as unite patients, advocates, health workers and leaders together globally — working to ensure patient and health worker safety internationally. Here are 11 takeaways for the public, patients and their families from the #uniteforsafecare virtual event.
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Content ArticleWhy is it hard for a highly trained professional to speak or report about mistakes made by him or her? Jean-Pierre Kahlmann, a retired Military and Airline Pilot, and now Co-owner and CEO of Yes Human Factors Ltd, believes that every staff member in an organisation should feel safe to use her or his voice to speak about safety issues, mistakes and how to learn and improve. In this TEDx presentation, Jean-Pierre takes you on a trip through his Airforce and civil aviation career to show the added value of Just Culture in high reliability organisations. He talks about his, initial, internal resistance against speaking about his mistakes and he sees the same resistance within the culture of health care professionals.
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Content ArticleKatie Evans-Reber, Head of People at Wonolo, shares her insights on how leaders can make frontline workers from all organisations feel part of the team and how to create a positive organisation culture.
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Content ArticleWe all want passionate employees. We want them to care about their jobs and go that extra mile for our company. We also want them to have the confidence to speak up if they think it’s necessary — whether it’s to question a given workplace process or ask a question about the nature of their SMART objectives. Of course, not all employees will stand up and make themselves be heard. So what makes some employees suffer in silence while others are emboldened to stand out from the crowd? The answer is psychological safety. A psychologically safe workplace cultivates a work environment where team members have the freedom to speak out. This environment thrives on mutual respect and encourages co-workers to share their ideas and thoughts without the fear of being shot down or ignored. The obvious effects of psychological safety are better employee wellbeing and mental health. . Stuart Hearn, a performance management specialist, gives his three examples of change that can improve the level of psychological safety in the workplace.
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Content ArticleBubble PAPR is an innovative PPE respirator designed to keep NHS staff safe while caring for patients during COVID-19. In this video, Brendan McGrath, an NHS Intensive Care Consultant, describes how Manchester University Foundation Trust, Manchester University and Designing Science Ltd came together to re-invent the Powered Air Purifying Respirator for the covid era.
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Content ArticleFor some, the day we learned of our rare disease diagnosis is a happy day. Odd, isn’t it? Imagine having your closest friends and family thinking that you are overreacting a bit, or that you are searching for some attention? It might be frustrating! Having a diagnosis can be very important, not only in order to consider medical needs, but sometimes it can also come as proof that something is happening to the body, proof to others that there is something going on. Several people across the globe, with different rare diseases, have shared their story, telling us about needing to be heard and understood.
