Charles Helms. MD, PhD, Medical Director of Clinical Quality, Safety and Performance Improvement for UI Hospitals and Clinics, talks about efforts to enhance patient safety:

What is the role of the Clinical Quality, Safety and Performance Improvement Office at UI Hospitals and Clinics?

This office has the job of measuring and analyzing quality and safety information at the hospital. We identify areas in our performance where there appears to be cause or need for improvement and we provide information that will guide that improvement. We supply this information to the folks that are out in the trenches at our place, working to improve quality and safety.

What sorts of safety initiatives are practiced at UI Hospitals and Clinics that the public might not be aware of?

We've got a couple coming along right now that we're kind of excited about.

The first is called Partners in Safety, and this particular program has come about with a large amount of support from the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, an accreditation body that all hospitals, most hospitals in the country, are responsible to. This particular program is designed to increase patient and patients' family involvement in safety efforts at our hospital - make them partners in that safety effort. There are things that patients can do that are tremendously helpful to us. One would be to make sure they keep their identification bands on and that the identification band is correct.

The second is to bring their medications with them when they come to the hospital so we can be sure what medications they're on, and that the dosages are correct.

The third thing is infection control. As you know, germs can be spread in the hospital. We try to prevent such spread by making sure that we wash our hands before seeing patients and after we see them, as well. And what we're asking our patients to do is to facilitate this particular function for us, by letting us know if we do not do that, to let us know directly and have perfect comfort in doing so that, "Hey, you didn't wash your hands before you began your exam."   I look upon that, personally, as a real help because I'm like most of my colleagues; we're not perfect, but we do our best to make sure that we do wash our hands as we should.

Another important area is in the area of surgery, to make sure that if an operation is to be performed on, for example, an extremity - one extremity or another - that that extremity is marked and to help us by making sure that does occur and it happens almost invariably here at this institution, but as you know from news around the country, sometimes these systems can fail and patients can be tremendously helpful to us in not sitting by and being passive about this, just letting us know.

And the last thing is to try to get patients feeling more comfortable about their stay in the hospital and really imbuing them with the right to ask any darn question they want to ask about their care. This is their right and it is in their interest to do that and we want to facilitate that.

I understand in May of this year a new program will be implemented. Can you tell us more about the "Patient Safety Net" program?

This is another exciting thing. This is a little more technological and it's going to be a lot of fun for our staff here at the hospital. We have a computerized system of reporting incidents. Incidents are things that go "wrong" during a hospital day in relation to care of a patient. They vary from a meal that doesn't arrive on time to medication that comes upstairs to be administered but is not administered or is the wrong medication.

Things like that happen in hospitals and we report those when they occur, they're a very important series of reportings. We are getting a brand new computerized system and that's really going to help us and facilitate, we think, the reporting of such incidents that occur with regard to patients; that occur because of staff, for example a staff accidentally sticking themselves with a needle on a unit; for visitors who visit who might accidentally bump themselves against a piece of furniture or something like that; make sure that all of these incidents are reported. By having these incidents reported, we can begin to look in a more scientific way at what things go right here and what things don't go so right, and what we can do to improve upon them.

The incidents as reported also get circulated to the people who are accountable for managing the incidents, making sure that everything comes out all right and that everything is done appropriately, but also to people who are going to be responsible for analyzing the total data and deciding, "OK, what can we do now to prevent this type of incident from occurring again?"   One of the approaches we're using for the analysis side of this and to make sure that steps are taken for prevention is what we call our MIIT team, or multidisciplinary incident investigation team. This is a group of experts from around the hospital, from multiple groups: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, people who work in respiratory care, people who work in radiology, and so forth. We examine all the incidents that are reported that have caused harm at the institution and using those, decide which are the most important and what we can do to improve upon the situation and make sure that they don't occur again.

When patients and visitors come to UI Hospitals and Clinics this week what will they see showcasing National Patient Safety Awareness Week?

If you happen to come in through the Pappajohn Pavilion lobby, you're going to see a couple of displays relating to Partners in Safety and probably the Patient Safety Net, as well, so patients and visitors might be interested in taking a look at that up in the Pappajohn lobby. For our staff we've got stuff that will be appearing in the Noon News , a little sheet of paper that you get when you have your lunch. There'll be materials available to our own staff on our Web site, called The Point, which is informational and where they can learn about these items, as well. There'll be some posters around, called the ABCs of Safety posters that should attract attention, perhaps even the patients' attention on the units, but I think primarily designed for staff. And there's a fun thing, we're going to have a safety quiz on our Web site that staff can partake of and winners will get prizes.

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