The AMA is Making Strides in Safety

Physicians Observe National Patient Safety Awareness Week

National Patient Safety Awareness Week (NPSAW), observed the first week in March, is the time health care organizations highlight the work they have done to improve and support patient care.  The AMA proudly present on-going work and materials that support physicians in their leadership role in ensuring that the nation’s patients receive safe, effective, and timely care. 

Among the resources available to physicians as part of the AMA Quality of Care Campaign for Patient Safety are tools to enhance teamwork, communication, systems improvement, and a culture of safety in all settings of care. The newest resource is “Working together to improve care and prevent harm.” (PDF, 514KB, requires Adobe® Reader®)

This year’s NPSAW week theme is “Patient Safety—A Road Taken Together,” represents the safety and quality journey physicians are taking to improve care of the nation’s patients. The week honors John M. Eisenberg, MD, MBA, a patient safety leader whose commitment to patient safety and health care quality is memorialized by the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety Awards, given each year to recognize individuals and health care organizations making significant contribution to improving patient safety. “A Physician Mentor in Patient Safety,” (PDF, 17KB) an article by Shirley E. Kellie, MD, MSC, describes an earlier time in the patient safety and quality journey.

AMA asks patients: Do you know what's in your medicine cabinet?  (PDF, 22KB)
 
To help mark National Patient Safety Awareness Week, the AMA is calling on patients to be an active partner in their own health care – starting with a simple check of the items in their own medicine cabinet.  The AMA is offering easy tips for patients and new materials for physicians to help improve patient safety.

Physician leadership and involvement

The AMA is helping physicians help patients through its Making Strides in Safety® program, which encourages physician leadership and involvement in improving patient care. As a national leader in patient safety the AMA diligently pursues initiatives that best serve the changing needs of America's physicians and patients. The AMA aims to improve patient safety by providing model programs and tools and advocating for safety-related medical school curricula and safe clinical work environments as well as supporting implementation of a new federal law designed to teach ways to prevent adverse events.

Downloadable tools from the AMA have been developed to engage and support physicians in national safety and quality initiatives and campaigns in all settings they provide care. They include toolkits on participation, implementation and health delivery systems improvement and a tip sheet on communication effectiveness (PDF, 87KB). Physician experts offer their advice on implementing patient safety interventions and physician leaders share their hospital's implementation strategies (PDF, 483KB).

Learn more

• Participation toolkit (PDF, 310 KB), which provides step-by-step instructions on how to get started
• Implementation toolkit (PDF, 304 KB), which assists involvement in the program
• Systems improvement toolkit (PDF, 703 KB), which contains steps for improving patient safety in hospitals
• Communications (SBAR) tip sheet (PDF, 87KB), for improving hospital staff communication

Making Strides in Medical Product Safety: Safety alerts for drugs, biologics, devices, and dietary supplements

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a growing number of electronic tools available for physicians to access important safety information about drugs you may prescribe or other medical products that you may use. Our AMA is supportive of FDA's efforts to provide physicians with important medical product safety information in a timely, science-based, and clinically relevant manner. Our AMA recommends that you consider subscribing to the FDA's MedWatch listserv notification or RSS news feeds, and to bookmark the FDA's MedWatch Safety Information site. In additon, you may want to download audio broadcasts (podcasts) that the FDA may do on a specific medical product safety issue. Finally, the FDA is working with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make available to physicians, free-of-charge, updated prescription drug labels (package inserts) on the NLM's DailyMed Web site. Patient safety is a key strategic issue for our AMA. Being informed in a timely manner about new and important drug and other medical product safety information is a necessary step to ensuring our patient's safety. Our AMA encourages you to take advantage of the FDA's electronic tools to help us protect our patients.

Patients and Physicians: Partnering for better healthcare and safer outcomes

The AMA and the AARP are asking patients to be a partner in their care. An announcement of the joint effort offers a new downloadable resource outlining physician-patient responsibilities for better health care and safer outcomes. (PDF,  673KB)