Insights from the Armstrong Institute
When you stay at a five-star hotel — if you are so lucky — you might expect a bowl of fresh fruit in your room every morning, gourmet restaurants on-site, and staff members who know your name and anticipate your needs. At a one-star hotel, you may just hope for value, cleanliness and decent water pressure. The(...)
Consider, for a moment, that you are a new physician. A patient, who is a lifelong smoker, comes to your clinic complaining of shortness of breath, and after conducting several tests you diagnose him with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Relying on your training, you prescribe medications, arrange for follow-up visits and describe activities that can(...)
Years ago, I felt firsthand what it was like to be the helpless family member of a hospitalized patient. My mother had undergone surgery in a hospital nearly three hours away, and things had not gone well. She was unconscious when I arrived in the intensive care unit. One of the first things I noticed(...)
Earlier this year, our hospital staff was weighing a new 24/7 family presence policy to allow immediate family members to stay with patients 24 hours a day. We knew this was a step in the direction of delivering patient- and family-centered care. We presented the proposal at a meeting of our Patient and Family Advisory(...)
Recently in one of The Johns Hopkins Hospital's intensive care units, a patient was dying from cancer and sepsis, and there was nothing that I, nurse Mandy Schwartz or anyone else could do to stop it. Yet as the patient’s family—two daughters and a husband—suffered at her bedside, Mandy saw their need for comfort, and(...)
For the second year in a row, The Johns Hopkins University will lead a free online course, The Science of Safety in Healthcare, which begins June 2 and continues for five weeks. If you have ever wanted an introduction to patient safety concepts—or have colleagues with interest—this five-week course is a great opportunity. Transforming our(...)
The doughnut shop I pass on my drive to the hospital isn't the kind of place where you might expect to see outpourings of random kindness. It sits in the shadow of a raised highway, a few doors down from a bail bond business and a block away from a prison complex that resembles a(...)
One of the most exciting things about working in patient safety and health care quality is that it’s not solely about advancing science or applying performance improvement methods. It is also about the excitement of being part of a social movement that is changing the culture of medicine—putting patients at the center of everything, sharing(...)
With all the changes taking place in the health care industry today, there’s no shortage of topics to debate. With this in mind, about a year ago The Wall Street Journal launched an online forum called “The Experts”. The format is simple. Each month a roundtable of health care leaders each share their thoughts on(...)
At Johns Hopkins Medicine, we recently held our fourth annual Patient Safety Summit, a daylong gathering in which faculty and staff from across our health system share their work to reduce patient harm and foster a culture of safety. The event has quickly become a tradition, with more than 425 participants flocking annually to our(...)