Smart Healthcare Safety from ECRI

The idea of the “five rights” for medication safety has been taught in nursing school since at least World War II, used as a memory tool that nurses should rely on to administer medications safely. Even though no one can identify where the five rights came from, the idea is embedded in medication safety programs and appears frequently in error reports submitted to ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization.

As our guest Susan Paparella, Vice President, Services, Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), points out, the five rights are inadequate as a safety tool. Because they do not address the system-level errors that contribute to medication errors, those errors can occur even when the five rights have been followed. In the latest episode, we discuss more about the shortcomings of the five rights, and better starting points for medication safety programs.

Learn more about ISMP and the ECRI-ISMP Medication Safety memberships.

In this episode, Tim Gibson, Senior Manager, Functional Equivalents, and Andy Poole, Associate Director, Strategy and Innovation, ECRI, describe strategies for enhancing the supply management process in non-acute organizations like nursing homes, ambulatory surgery centers, and physician practices. They describe the importance of building a robust data set and dedicating real staff time to this care-critical activity.

In the latest episode of our podcast, we speak to Karen Garvey, Vice President, Safety and Clinical Risk Management, and J.D. Buchert, Workplace Safety Manager, Parkland Health (Dallas, Texas). They describe their data-driven approach to identifying and combatting workplace violence, including the importance of keeping frontline staff involved in and aware of those efforts.

In this episode, we talk with nurse leaders from Allegheny Health Network (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) about their innovative blended staffing model that encourages LPNs to return to acute care, along with other programs to help bolster staffing, like incentivizing nurses who have left the workforce to return to practice.

Providing equitable care for a diverse population requires providers to meet patients where they are—including if they are experiencing homelessness. In this episode, Dr. Jose Ramos, of Pomona Valley Health Centers, describes his team’s outreach efforts to homeless individuals, how those efforts were affected by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and strategies for implementing similar programs elsewhere.

In this episode, our guest, Emily Transue, MD, MHA, FACP, Medical Director for the Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA), discusses how shared decision-making can be more than a tool to engage patients in their care, and can also help in the fight against care inequities and disparities.

In this episode, we talk with our guest, Tom McCormick, Vice President, Patient Accounting, at Penn Medicine, about adjusting staffing patterns in the patient accounting department during the COVID-19 pandemic. He shares his perspective on how staff roles changed, how the shift to remote work had expected and unexpected effects, and how all of it tied back to providing for patient and staff safety.

In this episode, our guests discuss their data-driven approach to identify and combat disparities and realize their vision of creating a Dallas County with equitable, accessible healthcare for all. Our first guest, Brett Moran, MD, is from Parkland Health & Hospital System, one of the country’s largest and most progressive safety-net hospitals. Our second guest, Steve Miff, PhD, is from Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation, a leading, non-profit, data science, artificial intelligence and innovation organization affiliated with Parkland Health & Hospital System.

In this episode, we're taking another look at shortages in the nursing workforce. Healthcare has faced workforce shortages in the past, and even before the COVID-19 pandemic made things even worse. The American Nurses Association and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast the retirement of more than half a million registered nurses by the end of 2022. Our guests are from the M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing at Villanova University, located just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In this episode, we're talking about ECRI’s number one Top 10 concern for 2022: staffing shortages and the potential dangers to both the patients and the staff. Prior to 2021, there was a growing shortage of both clinical and non-clinical staff, but the problem has grown exponentially. Our guest is Ernest Grant, PhD, RN, FAAN, the 36th President of the American Nurses Association (ANA).