By Mary Wilson Trider
This is Patient Safety Week in Canada. The Canadian Patient Safety Institute established Patient Safety Week in 2005 to “inspire extraordinary improvement in patient safety and quality” through communication within organizations and with their communities.
At AGH, we celebrate Patient/Resident Safety Week in recognition of our role as care providers through the ambulance service, hospital and long-term care settings – and it truly is a collaborative effort. Of course, this year we have been able to share our celebration with the surveyors from Accreditation Canada who were with us from Monday through Wednesday.
There have been information displays put up in the “link” hallway covering such diverse topics as Falls Prevention, the MOREOb program, Hazard Awareness, proper Patient Identification, Medication Reconciliation and Safe Lifting and Carrying. The displays describe how to keep patients and residents safe as well as ways that staff, physicians and volunteers can keep themselves safe at work, for example by using proper lifting techniques.
Information is also provided on Privacy, Ethics and Quality.
The displays include a number of testimonials from patient and residents who have received care across the organization.
Patient/resident safety week also features daily quizzes to reinforce the principles of safe care, with a prize being awarded to one lucky winner each day.
On Thursday, we are offering CPR recertification training/testing and flu shots for staff, physicians and volunteers given by paramedics from our Lanark County Ambulance Service and nurses from the Hospital.
Across the three divisions of the organization, many people have worked together to give us an interesting, informative and fun Patient/Resident Safety Week. My thanks to everyone who has been participating in creating the displays, reading and learning about safety, the CPR recertification/flu shot day and completing the quizzes. Special thanks to Heather Graham, Director of Health Records and Chief Privacy Officer for her leadership of the Patient /Resident Safety Week activities.
Mary Wilson Trider is President and CEO of Almonte General Hospital