 All right, well hello everyone and happy patient safety awareness week and thank you for joining today's webinar called be safe in the hospital learn how My name is Sarah Miller, and I'm our director of partnerships here at the patient safety movement foundation And I'm really excited to moderate today's webinar next slide, please So before we go through the agenda, I just wanted to go through a couple of just to cool things All of you attendees are muted upon entry and will remain muted with your video off throughout this presentation If at any point you have any questions that you'd like to send through to our speaker today There is a Q&A section at the bottom of the zoom if you hover over The little sidebar, so please submit your questions through there and feel free to utilize the chat to speak with any attendees Regarding some of the topics that we discussed today So going through the agenda We'll be talking about a little background about the patient safety movement foundation who we are Your safety in the hospital and some of our free resources that we provide COVID-19 resources that we provide and then finally the last 15 minutes of today's presentation will be utilized for a question of answer session Between myself and our speaker So excited to announce that our speaker today is our very own Ariana Longley our chief operating officer So with that I'd love to pass it over to Ariana to get some background about herself Thanks Sarah appreciate it and welcome to everyone. Thanks for joining and happy patient safety awareness week I'm the chief operating officer here I've been at the patient safety movement foundation for about six years and I have a background in public health But I do want to give a big disclaimer that I am not a doctor. I'm not a clinician I'm not a health worker. So I'm presenting this to you today as kind of a fellow patient to a future patient and We gathered a lot of information for you about how to be safe in the hospital So just keep that in mind for the questions and answers if your questions do get clinical I'm happy to go ahead and pass those on to some members of our team and circled back with you So let's get started. So some of you may know who we are and some of you may be new to the patient safety movement foundation The first thing that I love starting off with with any presentation is an example of a patient Story and so I do want to warn you if you're squeamish this video that I'm about to play does contain some graphic images and it may be upsetting just on people so If that seems like something that may affect you you may want to check back in about four minutes and perhaps Come back go get a cup of coffee or something and come back But with that said I'm gonna play a short video and then we'll get into more about who we are as the patient safety movement foundation Just as the nurse was about to put down the white padding that was over my incision my mother said wait a minute There's something on her stomach look like a mole and my mother asked the nurse to call the doctor to come back and She didn't want to she said I am not going to call the doctor for what's gonna turn out to be nothing My mother said I'll call the doctor I'll never forget. I was looking at my doctor and I raised the gauze and I just saw his face completely change and when I looked down at my abdomen The black dot was gone and there was a quarter-sized pustule The infection kept spreading and it was starting to go down my leg Over two million patients a year get hospital acquired infections. I ended up having six more surgeries nine blood transfusions I Left the hospital with an open abdomen that took three years to close My hospital they were cited for being in violation of five state laws and 10 federal laws For unsanitary conditions in their operating rooms It took me 10 years of almost weekly physical therapy to get back to a new normal life I Spent this past year 2017 fighting for my life All over again I went to the hospital with a sinus infection And they said okay, we're going to keep you because it looks like you're starting to be in the early stages of sepsis Well, the next morning the infectious disease doctor came and he said oh great news We're gonna send you home And I said really and he said you know my history. I said i'm a survivor of sepsis pseudomonas Bursa vre and necrotizing fasciitis Can we wait until my labs come back before you? Discharge me And you know, I'd like to see what some of the cultures are saying and he goes. Oh, we didn't we didn't do any cultures We don't need that and you know, we did a test for pneumonia and influenza and you're fine You don't have those so we're gonna go ahead and let you go home And I said well, can I get a second opinion on that? Can we talk to someone about that? And he said I'm the best infectious disease doctor in the valley Probably the state Any other doctor is going to tell you the same thing i'm telling you I ended up having two more surgeries Two more blood transfusions deep vein thrombosis blood clots in both arms. I was Right back where I was five years before And it just it really cemented For me the need To change the way We teach doctors the way we treat doctors the way they interact with patients and patients interact with them We need to start sharing patient experience With our medical students with our nursing students So that they can get it from the horse's mouth when you're building your your house your profession You want to make sure that you build it on a solid foundation of patient safety It's a major reason why we've seen 50 000 fewer preventable patient deaths in hospitals And if you want to know what that means ask alicia co who suffers the long-term effects of the hospital acquired infection You know, we've learned a lot in healthcare and we're better than we were 10 years ago We're doing great at talking about patient centered care. We're doing great at talking about preventing errors We've got to do better in the action of it So I don't know who else I'd rather have start off the presentation Like this than alicia coal. She remains on our board to this day And you know for those of you who don't know us She's the reason all of the patients are the reason that we're doing what we're doing Why we set our vision and our mission to really bold and all audacious goals So with that said our vision is changing as we head into this kind of new decade and we're in 2021 now We revised our vision and our mission So even those of you who may be aware of the patient safety movement foundation This should be new to you So our vision is to achieve zero preventable patient harm and death in healthcare by 2030 For those of you who have been following us, you know that we've been really focused on hospitals for the last eight years but we're starting to really embrace patient harm and obviously the most severe form of harm which ends up in death all across the healthcare system across the continuum of care and It wouldn't be us It wouldn't be the patient safety movement foundation If we didn't set the bold and audacious goal of trying to do this by 2030 we we need to urgent Excuse me urgently get to this goal of zero and therefore we will do our very best to get there by 2030 Our mission is to urgently unify people and collectively improve patient safety across the globe We do a great job I think of bringing people together So that we can work on solutions together and so our priorities as an organization We have three one is forging global relationships and partnerships and collaboratives To actively promote change for patient safety The second is to develop and disseminate patient safety education to governing bodies health care professionals students patients families and the public so This is part of one of our priorities today is educating the public educating you all about how you can stay safe in the hospital And third is to create public demand for safe and highly reliable care We want all of this knowledge to bubble up and impact, you know policies here in the united states as well as abroad So that's just a little bit about who we are at the patient safety movement foundation We're going to now move into the second part of our agenda, which is your safety in the hospital So let's first start with some facts We pop we did a public poll of the american public last year Right about this time in april When everyone was in lockdown and so We asked people a series of questions and and one of the most important questions that we asked that has impacted our organization Is have you heard or read any news reports about the number of medical errors and patient injuries last year in your state or your community hospitals? And 70 percent said no, I haven't heard or read any reports on medical error in my state or local community And that 21 percent said yes, I've I've heard just a little so If you're talking about like yeah, maybe I've heard something about it That's 91 of people in the american public that don't know about medical error and and likely don't know how to be Excuse me be safe in the hospital So we have a lot of work to do and we'll be repeating this survey every year going forward So with that said, um, if you don't know medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the united states on a normal year I I don't want to overlook the fact that we're still in the the covid 19 pandemic and and you know Nearly 500 000 people have died at this point alone in our country. So for this year for sure Covid has become the third leading cause of death But remember medical errors happen year after year after year after year So these are just a few of the kind of headlines from major news outlets showing that this Research was done back in 2016 saying that about 250 000 people die in the u.s. Alone from medical errors I also want to just throw out some news articles that um that you might see from all across the world So this says baby died in dad's arms after bungling hospital medics made five major mistakes Strouted in secrecy grandmother dies We have medical errors end with teens felony replaced with toe, you know horrifying incidents Happening all over the world. So just a few examples of All of the errors and how they impact and make it into the news to let people know about it And and lastly just to really connect this back to covid 19 You know, this article that was published in august of 2020 Shows, you know as covid 19 spread the feds relaxed rules and hospitals tried to contain the outbreak other infections may have risen So this is something that we've been talking about a lot, you know, covid 19 took a lot of resources and and had administrators and health workers focusing on the pandemic and so in in some cases other infections may have been on the rise And and also this is an article out of the bmc international journal for equity and health and you know, the safety of health care for ethnic minority patients is pretty appalling So this this article states that patients for minority groups are at higher risk of patient safety events Which are events that could have or did result in harm to the patient compared to the mainstream population And we've seen this as it relates to covid around access of care pretty much in general But we know that minority groups may be at higher risk of patient safety events And this is important to consider when seeking care So let's continue into how you can prepare for a hospital visit So the first thing is do some research one is research your medical issues If you have a sore throat do some research on that if you You know have some chest pain do some research on that search the web, you know I think that some health workers out there are going to say oh gosh, you know Searching the web and you're going to find all these things and all these zebras when it's really just horse hooves that are you know hitting the ground But it can be a really good source of information for you to at least say, you know, hey, I saw this Is is this what we might be looking at if you're unsure about what's going on with you The second is to research your doctor your who you're going to be seeing One example of this and we're not sponsored by them is healthgrades.com if you go onto their website You can type in your You know practitioners information and you'll get information about them. Sometimes it'll tell you their credentials You know where they went to school it it sometimes gives you ratings From their patients and this can be a really good way if you're you know, have to go to a new doctor A new type of specialist to just give them a a check out It's you know, a little bit more specialized than a Yelp or a yellow pages And third would be doing research on your hospital if you're you're planning on going in for An elective surgery there are two great resources One would be the cms or medicare website They have a tool called hospital compare and you can type in your zip code and it will tell you All of the hospitals around you and what their you know, what their safety ratings are Leapfrog group is a group that takes a lot of that hospital compared data And then also supplements their score with a survey that they send out to those hospitals And so their data is a bit more patient safety centric Again, they're a great nonprofit That that puts together and compiles this data on I believe a quarterly basis So if you aren't aware of those just next time you consider going in to see a specialist You have to go in for an elective visit These are some great resources for you The second is to kind of know your possible risks and alternatives to proposed treatments So I have three kind of basics here. So if you're going in for surgery As an example, you know, what kind of complications might you expect? You know, is it as simple as there might be bleeding at the site of the surgery? And what does that mean? When do you need to escalate that and And call your your doctor to say, you know, hey, this bleeding has been going on for too long Is it something like nausea? What kind of complications might you expect? That's a really great question to ask It's not a stupid question to ask Depending on what you're going in for and what kind of treatment you're seeking There's all sorts of different complications that you may want to be aware of and no, okay This this might be normal and this is definitely not normal Second is what else should you be concerned about kind of on the same lines as the last, you know Is it blood clots? pulmonary embolism delirium Based on medications that you might be given during anesthesia or shortly after in the post-operative period What should you be concerned about and again fair question for you to ask Your your care providers and third is alternatives to proposed treatments. So Maybe they say that you should go in and get surgery Is that the only option you should always be able to ask and feel comfortable asking what your alternatives might be Is there something else that you can try? For example, maybe it's a diet change. Maybe it's being more active Maybe it's just trying a medication or doing physical therapy Versus rushing off into surgery And again, if if surgery is the best option then, you know Consider that and and also if you don't think that that is the best option for you Then always consider a second opinion. You you always have the The right to go and get a second opinion So what should you bring with you if you're going into the hospital? The first thing would be your medical records And so your medical records has a whole bunch of different components And so i'm going to highlight a few of the important pieces that you can have control over as a patient Or as a family member who might be supporting someone who's going into the hospital So first is your problem list And and this comes from our very own steve barker and his checklist. So What is your cheek complaint? You know, what is the purpose of you being in the hospital? You know, did you cut off a finger? Is that the reason? You know, why are you in the hospital? It's it sounds um basic, but just you know state what your chief complaint is The second is what other medical problems treatments conditions comorbidities? Do you have did you cut off your finger? But you're also diabetic? Are you anemic? Do you have clpd? Do you have allergies? What other types of treatments? Have you had or problems? Do you have that may impact that chief complaint because yes, you might cut off your finger But if you also have a clotting condition, they probably should know about that clotting condition because you're now bleeding from your finger Making it really basic here, right? Second is your medication list. So the name of your medications the dose that That you take and the frequency and the best case scenario is if you take multiple medications Throw them in a baggie and bring them all with you actually bringing your medications with you can be really really helpful To those people who are caring for you They can also depending on how many medications that you have They may also notice that you might not be needing to take one or you might be taking a medication that is treating two conditions Maybe you got a prescription from a doctor that you went to two years ago for your diabetes And then last year you went to a new doctor and they gave you a very similar medication You may be kind of um double dosing on on what that um would be treating so Uh problem list medication list and if possible if you have control over it Maybe if you don't cut off your finger and have to go to the ed really fast if you can plan for it bring your medications with you So this is just a slide from the world health organization This is the five moments for medication safety. And so this is where you as a patient or a family member can step in and Ask questions. So um this this starts with starting a medication when you're starting a medication Some of the questions you can ask is what's the name of this medication? And what is it for? What are the risks and possible side effects of starting that medication? Second is taking the medication So it's really important that you ask or or understand When should you take this medication and how much should you take at that time? And then what should you do if you have side effects if you are nauseous or feeling dizzy or whatever it might be What should you do if you have those side effects? Third would be adding a medication. So let's say you have to add another medication You know that that gets back to what I said in a few slides ago. Do I really need any other medication? what is this for get back to kind of the basics and Very importantly, can this medication interact with any of my other medications? So Again, if you're going to multiple doctors Best case scenario, they're all talking to one another but realistically they probably aren't so It's important to to make sure that you as the person who's taking that medication Know that if there's any other medications that you're taking that might interact with them That you can avoid that situation Fourth is reviewing your medication. So how long should you take each medication? You know, maybe they give you Months worse. Should you continue taking it? Are you going to get a refill? and then The second question is am I taking any medications? I no longer need so for this For the same reason when you go in and check up with your doctor It's a great time to say look. These are what I'm taking. Do I still need to be taking all of these? And then lastly stopping medication. When should you stop each medication? Um, I think that's a fairly basic there And if I have to stop my medication due to unwanted effects, uh, where should I report this? So if you end up saying, you know 15 days into your 30 day Um prescription, you know, I have to stop this. I I I can't take the nausea. How do you communicate that back to your doctor? so, um Second as we move past kind of medications is as far as your medical records go you you should have this information or be able to recall If you've had previous surgeries or other related treatments and this gets back to what I said before if we're going along with the example of You know cutting off your finger What other previous surgeries or other related treatments might affect that chief complaint of you going into the hospital that day? What was done? How did it go? Did you have any complications? Remember if you had a complication once Is it likely to happen again? It's important for you to bring up those Those things and lastly if you were under anesthesia, how did you tolerate it? Did you get delirium after were you extremely? um nauseous afterwards You know, how did you tolerate it because again if you're going to do the same anesthesia as before the same medications? They may be able to tailor it or change it if you didn't have a great reaction So all of this can really affect your experience when you're in the hospital All right, so bringing an advocate. So this is my favorite slide. So if you are Only going to listen to one thing that I have to say I'd I'd like you to listen here So one is to always assume that the best information about you will come from you So you know yourself, you know, what's what's normal. What's not normal? um The best case scenario is that you will be able to advocate for yourself But if that's not the case then an advocate is a great way To to have someone who can be there along your side if you're unconscious if you're going to be in surgery They can they can and recovering from surgery whatever it may be Someone else can uh can help be there to support you. So let's just start really basically what is an advocate So this is a supporter believer sponsor promoter campaign backer or spokesperson So think of this person as your spokesperson and an effective advocate is someone who has the following qualities It's someone that you trust again You may be putting your life in their hands if you're not going to be able to speak second is you That person needs to be willing to take action on your behalf It can't be someone who just sits back and is going to just let things go by the wayside And third they have to be someone who works well with others. I know that this isn't funny, but if if you have a A partner someone in your family and they don't work with well with others. They have a short wick They, you know, maybe have a temper consider someone else if you're going in for a major You know a major treatment Maybe your neighbor or your best friend would be a better advocate than someone who is not going to work well with others Who will challenge the staff? And so for those reasons remember pick a really good advocate This is your spokesperson and someone who's going to kind of be taking all of the questions and all of the The feedback from your care team and making decisions Perhaps on your behalf All right, so we're moving into the third section of our agenda today, which is free resources So as far as the free resources go, we do have a mobile application called patient aider that the patient safety movement foundation developed with the help of a volunteer the volunteer was a nurse who Got tired of people not understanding that there were some dangers and risks that they could help educate themselves about And so this app is designed in a way where you can pick topics by Whether you're at home preparing to go into the hospital Whether you're in in the hospital or if you're at home recovering And so that's the first screen on the left The middle screen is all the different topics that you can read about to prepare Again, if you're at home preparing, you know, hey, I might need to know about anemia or you know Hey, I'm gonna I probably will be on a ventilator So, you know, do I need to read a little bit about that or of course, you know, the hospital is the most common event What do I need to know to make sure that I I don't fall in the hospital. So this is a free mobile application that again, we've developed I have I have some directions here for how to download patient aider So feel free to visit this back later This presentation will end up on youtube So you can always pause it and end up on the screen to figure out how to download it So we have a ton of resources on the patient safety movement foundation website And a lot of them are not resources that we've created. We're bringing you, you know, resources that we're aware of that may be helpful So there's all sorts. I'm not going to go into each and every one But, you know, from the consumers advancing patient safety safety to campaign zero And the center for Medicare and Medicaid services And I think the my health notebook is from johns hopkins. We have a whole collection of pamphlets and booklets and guides to get you ready for You know being in the hospital and second the kind of second category of resources that we have our checklists and kind of Flyers that that that have information. So the one on the bottom right is from the empowered patient coalition And this just defines who people are If you're not in the hospital frequently, you don't work in health care What's the difference between a charge nurse and a nurse manager? What's the difference between a resident and an intern? Sometimes it can get really confusing when there's just people coming in and out of your room all the time. So Really simple things like this that can help make your life Or, you know, your family member's life a little bit easier if they if they aren't In in the health care space So again, all of the patient safety movement foundation resources can be found on this website And lastly, I'm just going to share a few resources again. Don't have any official partnerships with these groups, but AHRQ or the agency for health care research and quality has an app called the question builder. So This app can be used for you to kind of put together that list of questions that you have for your doctor You know how it is sometimes you get into the doctor and you're like, oh shoot There were five things that I wanted to mention. I can only remember three You know now I'm gonna have to come back and amongst time and bring up the other two questions that I have so this is a great way of Putting together those questions and and kind of holding them in the app And second is the world health organizations first consumer based app And it's their who meds safe app and this will kind of guide you through those five key moments That we reviewed earlier for medication safety. And so this can be really helpful again, if you're starting a medication and nervous about it or Excuse me adding new medications All right, so covet 19 resources So i'm keeping it pretty brief on this presentation just because things are still changing And this will go on to youtube. I don't want any information to be out of date But please continue to follow your local distancing guidelines We do have patient resources on our website that's compiled those And secondly now that the vaccine is is available We have compiled lots of information and questions about the covet 19 vaccine at the link that you see on the screen And one of the resources that we have On the covet 19 page is about hospitalization during a pandemic as we know Visitation has been very limited And so everything that i've talked about related to advocates may not be the case As it has been traditionally you may not be able to be at the bedside You may only be able to face time in and be with your loved ones and and that is In some ways compromising patient safety because we don't have those traditional advocates by the bedside so what's important to remember is You know that that you can be as involved as you can be and We have some recommendations and and ways that you can Be involved during a pandemic on our website All right, so we're wrapping up here So our ask of you today during patient safety awareness week is to advocate for yourself speak up You are an important part of um, you know a visit of a experience an interaction with a A health worker and I think sometimes people are afraid to speak up They trust their doctor they don't want to question it But at the same time if something is happening and you're not comfortable It is your patient right to speak up and be able to Be involved in your healthcare as a partner Second is to advocate for your loved ones again as much as you can especially during this pandemic Third would be to use the resources that can help you including the resources on our website patient aider Those others that we've recommended Fourth would be to share these resources with those who can benefit from them if you know that your Neighbors husband is going to go in for surgery next month Please feel free to share these resources with them and last give us your ideas for changes or new resources I'm hoping that perhaps during the q&a here in a few minutes You might have some suggestions for what we might be able to add in the future So with that said the last thing that you can also help us do is reach more people During the pandemic here. We haven't been able to go out traditionally and go to schools and nurses and nurses sorry schools and colleges or organizations in order to Do this presentation we've had to do it all virtually So if you have any suggestions for where we can come and speak at a club or Group that you're a part of we would be more than happy to come out and give this presentation So now I'm happy to open it up for q&a. So I will pass it back to sarah Great. Thank you so much ariana and such interesting and informative information So we really hope that you all utilize the free resources that we provide and take full advantage of some of the additional resources that ariana highlighted Um, I will give it about a minute or two to see if we can have some more people submit questions I don't see any right now, but while we do wait I did want to acknowledge a few people have asked if this webinar is being recorded So the answer is yes. Um, this presentation is being recorded and we will upload the The live webinar recording to youtube and on our website and we will also provide a pdf version of the slides If any of you would like to refer back and look at the resources that ariana did um, so kindly link Um, and we encourage you to take a look at those So I will give it just one or two more minutes to see if perhaps anyone has any questions for ariana And before we we give you a couple more minutes back to your day And I'll just say if you come across a resource, um, you know as you're Maybe seeking care or actually being provided care and you think oh gosh This would be a great resource for the patient safety movement foundation Please don't hesitate to email it to me or if it's three months from now and you can't find from my email You know just uh, we have a contact us page on our website We'd love to continue to bolster all of the resources that we have on our website I didn't even touch about um the the more formal Books that we have but there are a ton of books that people who've experienced charm have had a lot of experience in the hospital Have been able to share with us So we we do link to a lot of books that you can buy on amazon and through your local bookstore. So I really appreciate everyone joining today and hope you have a great rest of your world Not worlds patient safety awareness week