American Medical Association Celebrates Patient Safety Awareness Week

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 11 Mar 2009 - 6:00 PDT

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The American Medical Association (AMA) is proud to support the national Patient Safety Awareness Week (PSAW). This year's theme is A Prescription for Patient Safety: One Partnership, One Team, and the week is sponsored by the National Patient Safety Foundation.

"The AMA is proud to support the goals of Patient Safety Awareness Week," said AMA Board Chair Joseph Heyman, M.D. "Free patient safety resources are available on the AMA Web site, and we encourage patients and physicians to take advantage of them."

New this year, physicians can receive CME credit for reading the AMA's medication safety book: The Physician's Role in Medication Reconciliation. The book details issues, strategies and safety principles to optimize the safe and effective use of medications and includes a medication tip card physicians can share with their patients.

Available through the AMA's Making Strides in Safety® program, the Working Together to Improve Care and Prevent Harm toolkit includes quality measures physicians can use and strategies to reduce harm. For example, the quality measures can help physicians deliver reliable, evidence-based care for heart failure, and a new strategy details how to reduce harm from high-alert medications, such as sedatives, narcotics and insulin.

"We encourage patients to take an active role in their care and to talk with their physicians about the best way to do this," said Dr. Heyman. "One easy way to get started is by cleaning out any unused or expired medicines in the home medicine cabinet." Tips are available on the AMA Web site from the Know What's In Your Medicine Cabinet program.

Clinical quality measures focused on safe and effective transitions between care settings are currently out for public comment at http://www.physicianconsortium.org. They address transitions from the inpatient setting or emergency department to the ambulatory setting or other sites of care. The measures were jointly developed by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, American College of Physicians, Society of Hospital Medicine, and the AMA-convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement.

American Medical Association