WIHI: Patient Safety Officer: One Person’s Title, Everyone’s Responsibility

Date: January 7, 2010

Featuring: 

• Carol Haraden, PhD, Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement
• Doug Salvador, MD, Associate Chief Medical Officer/ Patient Safety Officer, Maine Medical Center

 

It’s hard to point to a position more central today for making good on the goals of hospital patient safety than that of the Patient Safety Officer (PSO). And yet, perhaps no job is more challenging due to the overarching responsibility for multiple players, layers, and departments in an organization. It’s one thing for The Joint Commission to require that every US hospital have a PSO; it’s quite another to build the systems and teams to make the prevention of errors and injury a living mantra, and everyone’s priority, each and every day. When the national discussion puts more of the spotlight on coordinating care, reducing costs, and reducing readmissions, it’s easy to get distracted. But, that would be a mistake.