Patient Safety Expert Outlines 'Must-Do' Practices

The board members of the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Lucian Leape Institute say they believe clinicians must be compelled to follow certain well-established safety practices, with accountability and the enforcement of meaningful sanctions for willful failure to comply. These practices for which clinician compliance is not elective were outlined by patient safety expert Robert Wachter, MD, professor and associate chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, in the Health Affairs Blog on Aug. 20, 2015. At the very top of the list of these "must-do" practices are hand hygiene and influenza vaccination for healthcare workers.

As Wachter notes, "Today, while there is an increasing appreciation of the importance of achieving such balance, leaders of healthcare delivery systems are unsure about how and when to enforce certain safety standards and rules. We believe that the time has come to articulate criteria for “must do” safety practices: practices that have sufficiently compelling supportive evidence that clinicians should not have the right of individual veto."

To read the blog, CLICK HERE.