Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor's Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care From the Inside Out by Peter Pronovost & Eric Vohr

Author:Peter Pronovost & Eric Vohr [Pronovost, Peter & Vohr, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Medical, Health & Fitness, Prevention, Hospital Administration & Care, Hospitals, Health Care Delivery, Safety measures, Health Care Issues, Lists, Medical errors
ISBN: 9781594630644
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2010-02-18T05:00:00+00:00

Every meeting was different, but usually we had a series of speakers from Hopkins, Keystone, and hospitals throughout the state. We showed numerous inspirational clips like films of Roger Bannister, the runner who first broke the four-minute mile, and the 1980 U.S. hockey team that, against all odds, managed to beat the Russian team and win the Olympic gold. Between speeches, I would roam the crowd with a wireless microphone taking questions and hearing stories. As I walked around we energized each other; as we shared stories and experiences it helped ease their self-doubts and mine as well. To be honest, I was not sure we could improve care in a whole state. It had never been done before. And that made me both excited and anxious. But in spite of our collective doubts, there was no turning back. Momentum was building and we all knew we were going to push until we reached our goal of eliminating infections in the state, whatever it took.

In this fashion, many of the meetings were filled with tears of inspiration, laughter, and boundless energy. Despite often showing up sleep deprived from working in the ICU, I always left energized. Like most efforts in life in which you seek to make the world better, I received much more than I gave. In the end we were all working together trying to find answers to the same question—how can we help make patients safer?

It was crucial that we saw ourselves as one united team. In this spirit Chris printed up T-shirts that listed every single hospital in the program. Similarly, all of our correspondence, every single letter, fax, or handout, was printed on stationery that also listed these hospitals. If a team wanted to let us know they were struggling to collect data, we asked that it be printed on this stationery. We wanted everyone to be constantly reminded that they were part of this team and by failing to work harder they would be letting the whole team down.

As time went on, this sense of family began to have a name, “Ohana.” The name came out of the Disney cartoon Lilo and Stitch, which my daughter, Emma, loved to watch at the time. In the movie a young Hawaiian girl loses her parents and depends on the care and love of her older sister. At one point a potential husband courts the older sister, and the little girl is fearful the sister will marry and abandon her. The older sister tells the young child that she was protected by ohana—a Hawaiian word for “family” that essentially means, “You won’t be left behind.”

As I watched the movie one night with my daughter, Emma, I made a direct connection between the movie and our work in Michigan. Our work, like this movie, was about family and communities. It was a powerful emotional moment. The next morning, while running, I reflected on what I would say at the Michigan meeting the next day—ohana came to mind. The word soon became our slogan for teamwork.

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