Climbing Mountains Related to Improving Patient Care
Bear Creek Falls, Marseille, CO Final Destination Marseille Patient Safety Roundtable Hike June 2011
As we were making the five-hour drive from Marseille back to Denver, Tim McDonald likened the movement toward transparent, patient-centered care to climbing the same mountains that surrounded us that week. A team building 2.5 mile hike up to Bear Creek Falls at an ending elevation of ~10K feet on our third day at the Marseille Patient Safety Educational Roundtable provided plenty of opportunity to get to know our fellow attendees on both a more personal and professional level. It also served as a wonderful analogy, as Tim suggested, to the challenges inherent in delivering patient-centered care by teams of individuals who bring a variety of strengths, weaknesses and skill to each encounter.
As we climbed the mountain, sharing stories of our families and our work lives, we all grappled with the demands of 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