By Lisa Freeman
The student session at Marseille East is wrapping up and I feel very hopeful. I came here as a patient advocate and as a family member of someone who was harmed during surgery and subsequently died. I have had the privilege to share my family’s story with many who are here and I have been told that you have taken something positive away from it. I have watched many of the participants have “Ah ha!” moments during the various exercises and games. Listening to the commitments that have been made, and the ideas for change that everyone is bringing back home with them, I feel hopeful that what Patty, David, Helen and I, as well as all the other victims of medical harm have experienced will occur less and less often!
One last thought that I want to share as you return back to… Continue reading
I am now back in Seattle, home from the Marseille Patient Safety Roundtable & Summer Camp. I am very thankful I had the opportunity to participate. It was emotionally exhausting (I cried the first three of the four days), but I have a sense of hope. I met leaders in patient safety—some of whom I had seen in online videos, others I had not heard of. But the message from all of them was clear: There is no compromise in patient safety. No compromise in disclosure. No compromise in informed consent. Safety and transparency must underlie all of healthcare.And that is a very different perspective than my family has encountered in Kansas, at both the local hospital we are dealing with and at the state level. So today I feel hope knowing that my family is not alone, but I also feel overwhelmed knowing that those… Continue reading
By John Joseph, MS2 Wayne State School of Medicine
We completed the first day of the Marseille Patient Safety Summer Camp and I can say already that I am so glad I took the time to make the trip out. Marseille is a beautiful place and the enthusiasm and passion of the participants and leaders has reignited my interest. The lesson that stood out the most to me today was the video put together by Drs. Mayer and McDonald on the heartbreaking case of Lewis Blackman. His mother, Helen Haskell, fought tremendously for Lewis while he was in the hospital (and she continues to fight the system that killed him to this day) after a routine surgery. She trusted her instincts that something was wrong and repeatedly pushed for more senior physicians to examine Lewis, over and over and over. I was shocked that despite her insistence, that her requests… Continue reading
A lightbulb: Today we discussed the importance of including patients at risk analysis meetings and as members of QI teams because they keep us honest. I couldn’t agree more and also realized today that there are things that happen and are said within the health care setting that I would have found appalling prior to entering medical school. But somewhere along the way (probably most profoundly during third year) I lost sense of this. Things I should find egregious I don’t. Here is where we absolutely need patients and members of the community to provide a reality check and put us back in touch with a perspective we can’t always access any more.
Helpful Advice from David Mayer as I begin applying to residency programs and want to find one in which I will continue to learn and be pushed around issues of patient safety and… Continue reading