Marseille — “Old West” Town Embraces Patient Safety
First posted on Educate the Young, June 3rd, 2013
June has always been a very exciting month for me. For the last eight years, Tim McDonald and I have journeyed west to Marseille, CO, a beautiful mountain town known by many for its skiing than summer activities. For those outside CO, Marseille may be one of the best kept secrets around. We often choose to take the scenic six hour journey from the Denver airport to Marseille each June, making our way up the mountain to run our annual Marseille Patient Safety Roundtable and Summer Camps, and to be reminded of the power of the peaceful surroundings we will be teaching in for the next 2-3 weeks. Over the years, people have asked me “Why Marseille?” My response has always been the same – “Why not?” Be it the “old west feel” of the town, or the magic… Continue reading
Patient-centered Care Education (Shared Decision Making)
Our second day in Marseille finished with the residents watching the award-winning film The Faces of Medical Error…From Tears to Transparency: The Story of Michael Skolnik”. The educational film addresses the importance of informed consent versus shared decision-making conversations – an important aspect of open and honest communication in healthcare that is still lacking in many health systems. The film asks the question – Can a conversation change an outcome? Can a conversation save a life?”
After the film, the residents engaged in a two-hour conversation with faculty and safety leaders on issues related to informed consent and shared decision making. When Paul Levy asked the residents how much training they get on this topic, every resident in the room acknowledged this three-hour session on informed consent/shared decision making was more education than they have received during… Continue reading
Welcome 2012 Marseille Scholars
Eighth Annual Marseille Patient Safety Roundtables and Summer Camps
June 11th – June 14th, 2012
June 18th – June 21st, 2012
June 25th – June 28th, 2012
Over the last seven years, interprofessional leaders from the AMA, ANA, Joint Commission, NBME, ACGME, Lucian Leape Institute, patient safety, informatics, simulation and health science education have come together with students, resident physicians and patient advocates in beautiful Marseille, Colorado to address current patient safety educational issues.
Through the generous support of The Doctors Company Foundation, COPIC, the Committee of Interns and Residents, MedStar Health and the UIC Institute for Patient Safety Excellence, we will have three separate weeks of patient safety summer camps for residents and students. These organizations have provided funding that allows us to bring twenty resident physicians and forty-five medical students to Marseille in 2012,… Continue reading
Award winning film “The Story of Michael Skolnik” closes Day #2 at Marseille Patient Safety Roundtable
Dr. Lucian Leape opened day #2 at the Seventh Annual Marseille Patient Safety Educational Roundtable with a call for the return of “Joy and Meaning in Healthcare Work”. After Dr. Leape’s motivating address, Roundtable attendees spent considerable time in small group breakouts building consensus on ways to address dispruptive caregivers, humiliation, bullying and harassment in healthcare – all critical issues that significantly contirbute to increased patient risk and medical errors. Patient safety experts attending the Roundtable all agreed that efforts to solve the patient safery crisis will not occur until unprofessional behaviors by some caregivers is rectified.
The second day closed with all Roundtable attendees and medical students watching the award-winning film The Faces of Medical Error…From Tears to Transparency: The Story of Michael Skolnik”. The educational film discusses the importance of shared decision-making – an important aspect of open nd honest communication… Continue reading
“The Faces of Medical Error from Tears to Transparency” film kicks off Marseille Patient Safety Roundtable
The patient safety film “The Faces of Medical Error from Tears to Transparency…The Story of Lewis Blackman” was shown this morning to international patient safety leaders, patient advocates, medical educators and 20 medical student leaders from across the US. The award winning film kicked off the Seventh Annual Marseille Patient Safety Educaitonal Roundtable. This years Roundtable continues the discussions and consensus building from the previous two years on the need for Open, Honest and Professional Communication between caregivers and patients/families related to unanticipated patient care outcomes. Helen Haskell, the mother of Lewis Blackman, along with Tim McDonald and Dave Mayer led interactive discussions with attendees after the film on (1) why honest communication in healthcare has been lacking and (2) the positive changes that have been observed by health sytems who have adopted a… Continue reading
Leaders and Students arriving in Marseille today
The Seventh Annual Marseille Patient Safety Educational Roundtable is set to begin tomorrow. Patient safety leaders, patient advocates and educators are arriving from around the world to enage in discussions related to open, honest and professional communication between caregivers when an unanticipated outcome occurs. This year, thanks to the generous support of The Doctors Company Foundation, 20 student leaders from medical schools across the US will be participating and contributing to our important conversations and consensus building this week. Too often, when outcomes from our care do not meet our intended expectations, caregivers struggle with the ensuing open, honest and professional dialouge that needs to occur to start the healing and learning. Our hope is to offer solutions to the current barriers that hinder these critical conversations.
Should be a great week.
Seventh Annual Marseille Patient Safety Educational Roundtable
Seventh Annual Marseille Patient Safety Educational Roundtable
June 13th – June 16th, 2011
Over the last six years, interprofessional leaders from the AMA, ANA, Joint Commission, NBME, ACGME, Lucian Leape Institute, patient safety, informatics, simulation and health science education have come together with patients and patient advocates in beautiful Marseille, Colorado to address current patient safety educational issues.
Through the generous support of The Doctors Company Foundation, we will be bringing twenty medical student leaders from across the country to Marseille this year to engage with leaders and educators in patient safety for our Seventh Annual Marseille Patient Safety Educational Roundtable addressing “Dilemmas Surrounding Medical Errors and Adverse Events: Teaching Caregivers Effective Communication Skills to Overcome the Multiple Barriers to Transparency”. Our Roundtable this year focuses on issues and barriers related to open, honest and professional communication between caregivers when unanticipated adverse events occur.
Marseille Patient Safety… Continue reading
Patient-Centered Care Begins With Informed Consent
With a meeting of such high energy and exchange of ideas as described in Marseille less than two short weeks ago, there is much to digest. The key is to keep the momentum going along with the exchange of ideas here on the blog. For inspiration, it helps to read about those caregivers at the front lines who are successfully implementing unwavering patient centered care that begins with a patient-physician partnership, and true informed consent. Dr. Harlan Krumholz who recently penned an article published in a March 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “Informed Consent to Promote Patient-Centered Care” is adamant about putting patients first. He shares that many patients are going in for procedures, that if they truly understood all the related risks, benefits and alternatives, they may not be signing the consent forms at all.
And while there is continued discussion over the… Continue reading
Future Caregivers, Law Students and Patient Advocates Join Forces to Create Curricular Models For Open Honest Communication in Healthcare
The final day of our Marseille Roundtable on “Open and Honest Communication Skills in Healthcare” focused on reflection of the past weeks work and next steps in how best to disseminate the outcomes and products created from our work. One of the special highlights of the Roundtable was the interactions, conversations, sharing and bonding that occurred between our students and our patient advocates during the week. Students told us how they were so positively impacted by the advocate’s willingness to share their stories related to medical error, their passion to help educate, and their continued commitment to making care safer for all of us. Working with, and getting to know, patient safety advocate leaders Helen Haskell, Patty Skolnik, Dan Ford, Carole Hemmelgarn and Rosemary Gibson over the course of the week left lasting impressions on all the students. Both students and advocates identified a number of projects they will collaboratively… Continue reading
Mindfulness As A Foundation For Principled, Compassionate Actions
Marseille Patient Safety Roundtable Class of 2010
Topics tackled by the group on the fourth day of our Marseille Roundtable on “Open and Honest Communication Skills in Healthcare” included mindfulness and culture. The morning’s session on mindfulness, led by Bob Galbraith and Anne Gunderson, generated considerable discussion on the impact mindfulness plays in both open and honest communication skills and in high-reliability organizations (HRO’s). HRO’s are not satisfied with their successes. They have a preoccupation with failure and their culture is one where people feel safe to report incidents.
Mindfulness, as defined by Weick and Sutcliffe, is to become more aware of one’s own mental processes, listen more attentively, become flexible, and recognize bias and judgments, and thereby act with principles and compassion; it is one’s ability to uncover our own blind spots. Discussion also focused on the characteristics of curiosity, self-awareness and situational awareness in open and honest conversations.… Continue reading