Beyond Do No Harm
Becoming a safer CentraCare
Tom’s Blog
I read an interesting opinion essay earlier this summer. The headline read, “America’s Hospitals Are in Transition.”
I read an interesting opinion essay earlier this summer by Dr. Daniela J. Lamas, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The headline read, America’s Hospitals Are in Transition. I think that is true. Dr. Lamas focused on the absence of Covid patients in her care, the presence of N95 masks to protect everyone, and the things that have changed in her hospital — like ours — since the pandemic. Notably, the visitor restrictions that result in fewer family members at the bedside while we provide care.
I’m a believer in serving others
Dr. Lamas also wrote how many of us believed throughout the last two years, that when the pandemic was over, “we would find ourselves somewhere better.” Especially with vulnerable populations. Such “promises are naïve and empty,” she asserts, “without a plan for how to make and sustain real change.”
While Dr. Lamas suggests that “newly minted doctors (who) begin their internships” provide us all with a chance for reinvention, she pins the future on their nervousness and excitement, and more than anything on the “hope for what is to come.”
I’m a believer in serving others and agree that we all begin with a necessary naivete. And, there is more we can do that is within our control to ‘find ourselves somewhere better.”
We can make and sustain real change.
We can make and sustain real change.
That leads me to how deeply I have been thinking about safety lately.
I would be out of touch if I wrote about safety without acknowledging how little of it there seems to be in America these days. Violence appears to be routinely visited upon schools, grocery stores, places of worship, and with increasing frequency in healthcare. Too often I hear about threats to physicians, APP’s, and others on our care teams. What happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma earlier this summer and the conviction of the murderer in the Buffalo, MN Allina shooting are stark reminders of the extremes that angry patients will go.
It is an unfathomable reality that health care workers are the most likely to be assaulted of all professions in the US. So what can we do to make and sustain real change? Plenty.
HRO’s maintain an intense focus on safety.
We can embark upon a journey to become a High Reliability Organization (click to learn what an HRO is). HRO’s maintain an intense focus on safety. That is the hallmark of High Reliability Organizations. Patient safety. Employee safety. Emotional and psychological safety. And it is clear that we, and our colleagues across the nation and the world, have a long way to go because modern healthcare still results in far too much preventable harm of every kind.
The good news is that we can and will work to systematically eliminate it.
Society as a whole needs the caring you provide
Ultimately, though, greater safety for all in our society comes down to relationships and a sense of community. We can help lead that, too.
Those who serve others by providing healthcare have always been a beacon of comfort and hope. I believe that when each of you practice your craft with your teams, you strengthen the fabric of our communities and build bulwarks against violence and hate. Our patients, their families, friends and society as a whole need the caring you provide – now, more than ever.
I do have hope for what is to come. And I believe in our ability to make real change happen. It will take all of us emerging from this transition and creating the future we wish to see.
Join me on the journey and let’s keep talking.
Tom
Tom Schrup, MD, is Chief Physician Officer of CentraCare