Overview

Each year, one out of every four hospital patients in the United States will be harmed by the care they receive. Over 400,000 will die as a result. Dr. Gretchen LeFever Watson's definitive guide empowers patients to be patient safety advocates. It takes a village to combat preventable errors and omissions that cause millions of deaths and sickness in our nation’s hospitals and care facilities. Although most of these deaths are due to human and system errors—not faulty medical decisions or diagnoses—this annual death toll—as well as the millions of additional incidents of survivable patient harm—could be cut in half through consistent use of simple and nearly cost-free safety behaviors. In Your Patient Safety Survival Guide, Gretchen LeFever Watson delivers a patient-centered blueprint on how to transform the patient-safety movement so that millions of unnecessary illnesses and deaths in hospitals, outpatient facilities, and nursing homes can be avoided. She provides key safety habits that people must learn to recognize so they can be sure hospital personnel use them during every patient encounter. She also explains how addressing the most common safety problems will set the stage for tackling a wide range of issues, including healthcare’s role in the overuse of opiate painkillers and its related heroin epidemic. Watson’s call for a more sensible societal response to medical and human error in hospitals promotes a timely and full disclosure of all mistakes—an approach that has been proven to accelerate the emotional recovery of everyone affected by patient safety events while also reducing the financial burden on hospitals, providers, and patients. Readers will learn how to: • Change behavior to catch medical errors before they result in illness or death. • Prevent the spread of dangerous infections in hospitals and other care facilities. • Leverage the power of basic safety/hygiene habits. • Eliminate mistakes during surgery and other invasive procedures. • Avoid medication errors and the overuse of opiates • Raise awareness and inspire civic action in their communities.

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9781538102091

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Reviews

Every patient wants safe health care, but it is hard to know how to get it. This book provides a useful action plan, including concrete steps and actual scripts that patients and families can use to become more effective advocates for their own safety. -- Albert W. Wu, MD, MPH, Professor and Director, Center for Health Services & Outcomes Research, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Author Information

Gretchen LeFever Watson, PhD, is a clinical psychologist whose research and intervention projects have received international scholarly and media attention, including appearances on TV and radio programs such as CNN Headline News, the PBS News Hour, and The Diane Rehm Show. Watson was among the first to document drug overtreatment for ADHD in the U.S. and to demonstrate that disruptive conduct can be successfully reduced through schoolwide behavioral interventions. Following positions as a hospital psychologist, medical school faculty member, and university professor, Watson served as Director of Patient Safety and Performance Excellence for a large healthcare system. Currently, she is president of Safety & Leadership Solutions, a consulting firm for organizational safety and change management.

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