Better teamwork key to maintaining patient safety

Organizations discuss how backup systems and other steps can mitigate the ill effects of errors.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Feb. 7, 2005.

Recognizing that the increasing complexity of medicine brings with it a host of new hazards for patients, representatives from 27 health care organizations met in Washington, D.C., to come up with a plan to do something about it.

In a statement developed at the Patient Safety and Medical System Errors in Diabetes and Endocrinology Consensus Conference, participants called for improving teamwork, making better use of information technology and expanding professional and patient education to help patients live longer and better lives.

"We needed to come together and examine the evidence and come up with recommendations for solutions to the problems we see," said Richard Hellman, MD, conference chair and University of Missouri/Kansas City School of Medicine clinical professor of medicine. "I think the people who have the most power to do something about these problems are the doctors -- because we have the most responsibility. But we have to do it with help from a lot of others."

Hosted by the American College of Endocrinology and the American Assn. Of Clinical Endocrinologists, the conference was held Jan. 9-10 and featured presentations by World Medical Assn. President Yank Coble, MD, past president of the AMA; Josie Williams, MD, PhD, from the AMA-led Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement; and AMA House of Delegates Speaker Nancy H. Nielsen, MD, PhD.

"It was very exciting," said Dr. Nielsen, an internist from Buffalo, N.Y., and a former member of the National Patient Safety Foundation board of directors. "The profession came together as a whole at the conference to identify the key maneuvers we should be doing."