Building Safe, Highly Reliable Organizations: CQO Shares Words of Wisdom

摘要

The appeal was the TJC focus on patient safety as a transformative strategy. I practiced medicine for more than 20 years in settings that included academic medicine, private practice, the Veterans Health Administration, and as active-duty military. The one constant across these settings were system failures that resulted in patient and care team harm. In 2002, a young patient of mine died from sarcoma. My sister called me on the day of his death, and I shared how sad it was. She told me that there was someone who I needed to talk with. Later that day, I received and call from a senior vice president for a major pharmaceutical company. He challenged me to go back to school and work on a master's degree, saying that it would help me determine what I needed to do next. In 2005,1 enrolled in the Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. By then, I had not had a vacation in more than 6 years. I was in solo practice. After completing the MHA, I was selected as a fellow at the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI), which was a transformative experience and I also left with a unique set of skills that included the science of improvement, statistical process control, change management, leadership, and teamwork. I left IHI knowing that the next phase of my career would be focused on patient safety.