Episode 50: Safety Checklist for Adverse Events
December 7th, 2017
In the final, 50th episode of the W21C Patient Safety Podcast, Drs. Rahim Kachra and Shannon Ruzycki discuss their simple intervention aimed at improving patient safety awareness and reducing the frequency of preventable adverse events in educational settings. They created a checklist sticker, which is used by medical residents at the Medical Teaching Unit of the Foothills Hospital, to serve as a reminder of important—but oft-overlooked—safety assessments. Their hope is that the use of these stickers on a regular basis will help students to habitually monitor for patient safety criteria, which is not usually a formal part of medical training. In this episode you will learn that adverse events are common in hospitals; trainees are subject to cognitive overload, which may be minimized by checklists; and safety culture is critical, but culture change is slow.
Rahim Kachra is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, a General Internist at the Foothills Medical Centre, and the Director of Teaching Innovation for Undergraduate Medical Education. He has a Master’s of Education in Technology, Innovation & Education, and his research interests include educational innovation, patient safety, and the patient experience.
Shannon Ruzycki is a fifth year general internal medicine fellow at the University of Calgary. She is completing her Masters in Public Health with a concentration in Quality, Patient Safety and Outcomes research at Johns Hopkins. She has a special interest in patient safety for complex medical inpatients, as well as quality improvement of perioperative medicine.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the past five seasons—whether behind the scenes or in front of the mic, this would not have been possible without you. Thank you especially to everyone who downloaded and listened to this podcast. Because of you, the series was downloaded over 20,000 times. All episodes will remain available via iTunes and Spotify.