Putting Patient Safety First in the New Year: Primary Care Resolutions

The start of a new year and a new decade presents a perfect opportunity for you and other clinicians to take a fresh look at safety practices and determine—for yourself and for your patients—Are You Safe?

CRICO has developed a series of case studies designed to help all members of primary care clinical teams reduce the risk of patient harm in the course of diagnosis and treatment. Make it a patient safety resolution to not only familiarize yourself with these risk mitigation resources, but to build the learnings into your practice and help make this the safest year yet!

Focus

Are You Safe? cases were developed for specific risks organized under a broader outline of six key safety principles in primary care:

1. Establish and sustain a culture of safety
2. Build and support effective teams
3. Partner with patients and families in their care
4. Ensure closed-loop processes for referrals and tests
5. Develop systems for reliable diagnosis and delivery of evidence-based care
6. Standardize communication among all care providers

Each case study focuses on a single area of risk, but addresses issues that arise across a range of patient presentations, diagnoses, and clinical scenarios.

Additional Resources

Additional related materials, developed by CRICO and other affiliated patient safety leaders, are also available on our website: www.rmf.harvard.edu/areyousafe. These resources include:

1. CME Bundles – Massachusetts-based clinicians earn required credits for Risk Management Category 1 Study: samples
2. Podcasts – CRICO’s Patient Safety Pods: Med Mal Insider and Safety Net provide an extensive library of audio learning, featuring interviews with experts from the medical, legal, and broader health care community: samples
3. Clinical Decision Support Tools – These guidelines offer evidence-based recommendations and provider-to-patient talking points, created by convening clinical experts from across the Harvard medical community to serve as advisory editorial groups: samples
4. Patient Safety Alerts – Patient safety learnings gleaned from our AMC PSO convenings available to the public as part of CRICO’s ongoing commitment towards improving patient safety across the continuum of care: samples
5. What’s My Risk? – A library to help clinicians identify specialty-related risks and mitigation resources, leveraging the power of CBS (our National medical malpractice database): samples
6. Additional case studies – For more than 40 years, CRICO has leveraged our extensive database of MPL cases to provide learning opportunities for clinicians. We have more than 100 case studies available for your review; search by topic or specialty: samples