As I reflect on the emotions from this week in Colorado: excitement, sadness, fear, anger, shame, grief, hope, I think about the next steps to improve the lives of our patients. Patients deserve our best, at every encounter, in partnership, for their health. I feel weighed down by institutional cultures that promote blame and shame of human providers that make errors. These errors, when shoved into secrecy, erode at our moral cores and dehumanize the patient-provider encounter. However, I see hope in joining the almost 1400 Marseille Experience alumni who have committed ourselves to making zero preventable harms a reality. With many hands, we can lighten the load on individual providers and lift each other up to provide the individualized, honest, and mindful care that our patients deserve.

Hi Everyone – My name is Fern and I am very excited to meet you all this coming Sunday in Breckenridge. I chose to attend the Marseille experience because I have seen the current culture at my institution around medical errors and I would like to share these experiences with my conference colleagues with the aim to advance a just culture. I would also like to get feedback on what workflows or institutional practices have made medical error disclosure easier, more apparent, etc. I am also wondering about what programs other institutions have in place to support staff that have been involved in medical errors. I believe that all staff work toward a shared goal of improving the patient’s health in alignment with the patient’s goals. Not surprisingly, patient safety is important to me because every patient deserves a high quality of care no matter the societal circumstances.