Wow, I cannot believe how many times I have made this comment to people.  I have made this comment to patients, friends, and family. After what I have learned during the Marseille experience I will never make that comment again. I will expand that comment to include I will not allow any member of the health care team to refer to themselves as “just a”. Every member of the health care team has an equally important role in providing safe, high quality health care.  The patient, family, housekeeping, dietary, volunteers, maintenance….the list is immense and each person has a vital role in the health care team.  Words truly do have meaning!

I am truly grateful for all the knowledge I gained in today’s discussions on patient safety.  As I sat and watched the video Lewis Blackman, I became emotional.  Fear, anger, sadness, I think I felt them all.  I can only imagine how Ms. Blackman felt in the hospital room helplessly watching her son suffering.  I remember Ms. Blackman saying in the video the medical staff was only interested in completing tasks.  No one cared about her or her son.  I believe we have lost site of the main reason many of us went into health care, caring for our patients.  I have seen similar situations happen too often in my career.  As health care workers, we have so many tasks to complete and hoops to jump through that we are often married to the computer screen.  We look at numbers and… Continue reading →