Chair File: Accelerating Efforts to Enhance Patient Safety and Quality

This week is Patient Safety Awareness Week. It’s an annual recognition to inspire action and raise awareness to improve the safety of our health care system and acknowledge the progress that’s been made.

At hospitals and health systems, patient safety is a priority every single day. Leadership and care teams are committed to making improvements and enhancements to ensure all patients receive safe, world-class care.

To support health care teams in this work, the AHA offers an array of resources, initiatives and educational courses. Here are a few examples:

AHA’s Patient Safety Initiative is a nationwide project that was launched recently to reinforce and accelerate patient safety efforts. AHA member hospitals and health systems can still sign up and participate in this initiative to share tools, data and stories to advance patient safety; to highlight and resource successful local innovations at national scale; and to inform policy discussions to support, spread and sustain safety improvement.

AHA Team Training offers courses and workshops, monthly webinars and customized coaching to help individuals and teams in clinical and nonclinical roles improve communication and teamwork using TeamSTEPPS — Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety.

AHA’s Living Learning Network is a virtual community of more than 800 members focused on transforming health care and exploring challenges and opportunities in the areas of patient safety, quality improvement, infection prevention and control, and more.

Project Firstline is a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several organizations including the AHA. The project provides a number of excellent resources, tools and videos for health care professionals — from bedside nurses to administrators to environmental staff — on topics related to infection control and prevention.

Several AHA affiliates, including the Association for the Health Care Environment, the American Organization for Nursing Leadership and the American Society for Health Care Risk Management, also offer a wide variety of tools, resources and solutions to advance patient safety and quality.

For Patient Safety Week at Dartmouth Health, the health system that I lead, we are bringing our system members together to engage in conversations about how to provide reliably safe care to our patients, team members and communities. It is an opportunity to engage in shared learning. This year there will be a particular focus on fostering psychological safety across our health system. 

Although health care delivery is changing rapidly, safety remains one of the cornerstones of providing high-quality care. The AHA will continue working with hospitals and health systems across the country to develop and share effective strategies and solutions that improve and sustain patient safety and quality and advance health for all.