Show notes
So this episode is heavily rooted in the field of healthcare delivery science. Our topic is patient safety. It is a super important topic! Some think 3rd leading cause of death. Now that is regarded as probably hyperbole. But everyone agrees, it is a very big problem and causes far more adverse outcomes and yes deaths than many other industries.We are SUPER privileged to have a real world expert in the field of patient safety as our guest, Dr. Jennifer Myers. Dr. Myers is Professor of Clinical MedicineDirector, Center for Health Care Improvement and Patient Safety (CHIPS), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, a fellow in the American College of Physicians. and a Fellow in Hospital Medicine in the Society for Hospital Medicine.So here’s the deal.When you receive health care, there is risk. Almost everything we do in healthcare carries pretty significant possibility of error or imperfect care. Some have attempted to quantify the impact of error in medicine. The common finding is that it’s a very big problem. In the hospital, errors happen about 3% of the time, and they are deadly about 6% to 13% of the time. AHRQ estimates that 1 in 8 Medicare patients in the United States experience medical error in a given hospitalization. In an outpatient setting, recommended treatments are followed only 55% of the time. There is a newish field of medicine to the rescue it is called patient safety. Organizations like CampaignZero and government bodies like AHRQ have identified some best practices to minimize medical error and maximize quality of care.The recurring theme is to take an active role. Communicate, a lot. Ask questions, question decisions, track events. Don't assume your health care team has seen your results or correctly acted on them. It can feel frighterning to ask questions but it is essential to keeping yourself safe. Healthcare providers need to make a welcoming environment, and some do this better than others.There is another kind of error that is seldom discussed or researched. It is failure to enact what is possible through behavior change. In many ways, the modern healthcare system is a hammer that looks to all of our health problems as nails that need hammering with tests, medications, and procedures. Lifestyle medicine practitioners observe that modern traditional healthcare systematically omits discussions on how profoundly beneficial behavior change can be, when done right. So I hope that in this discussion, Dr. Jennifer Myers and I are able give you some tools that can help you engage with it safely.
