Many of you may have watched the women’s Wimbledon Finals and, like me, were disappointed about the performance of Amanda Anisimova. Her loss was significant, but as I listened to her concession speech, I was impressed with her poise and how she was thinking about it. She was gracious but still thoughtful. Apparently I was…
Author: RRHemphill
I am an emergency medicine physician by training, but have spent much of my career with a focus on trying to improve patient safety and quality of patient care. I have worked in government, military and large academic systems.
AI and Critical Thinking
I have been thinking a lot about AI and the impact on healthcare. On the one hand, this can help providers consider and strengthen a difference diagnosis. It can help minimize the need for memorization and trying to recall important facts about specific high risk diagnosis and needed treatments. AI can help keep people up…
Should it Take Courage to Write an Article?
I have been writing a fair bit about some of the many things that the VA has done for the field of healthcare and particularly quality and safety. This system is under some threat with potential cuts to staff and services. In response, some individuals in that system wrote an article and submitted it to…
Comparing Patient Outcomes: Veterans Health Administration vs. the U.S. Healthcare System
I have previously stated my bias about the healthcare that is provided by the VA to its millions of Veterans. It is not a perfect system by any means. I have yet to find a health system that is always perfect and never fails the patients it tries to serve. Certainly, my father is an…
Emotional Intelligence and Patient Safety
We have discussed why Emotional intelligence (EI) is valuable as a leadership skill, so it should not be surprising that it can also play a role in enhancing patient safety by fostering better communication, teamwork, and emotional management among healthcare professionals. Below are ways in which EI can contribute to safer healthcare environments. You may…
Emotional Intelligence And Modern Healthcare
First, let’s make sure we have a shared mental model of what Emotional Intelligence is. Emotional Intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and influence one’s own emotions and the emotions of others. The concept was popularized by Daniel Goleman in the mid-1990s and is now widely regarded as a critical competency for effective leadership and…
Contributions of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to Patient Safety in the U.S – Part 2
Let’s continue the discussion of some of the many things that the Veterans Health Administration has done that has informed practice in Academics as well as the private sector. Below additional information outlining several more of the key initiatives, strategies, and achievement of the Veterans Health Administration. 1. High-Quality Surgical and Medical Care Surgical Excellence:…
Contributions of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to Patient Safety – Part 1
Given the stress under which many government agencies exist right now, I thought I would comment on one of the agencies that I know well. I would like people to understand the many things that the Veteran’s Health Administration (VHA) has done, not just for Veterans, but for all Americans. Below is some information outlining…
When the Right Drug Goes to the Wrong Patient
In healthcare, precision is everything. A single mistake—administering the right medication to the wrong patient—can have devastating consequences. Despite all the advancements in electronic health records, barcoding systems, and smart infusion pumps, wrong-patient medication errors remain a persistent threat to patient safety. These are not rare occurrences or edge cases—they are real, preventable failures in our system…
Falls in Healthcare – Strategies to Improve
The challenge with trying to address falls is not that we don’t have a variety of strategies. We actually have quite a few. They range from the very simple to quite challenging and labor intensive. A variety are listed below. A few things have been a surprise to me in looking at ways to reduce…
Gravity is Still Working….Falls in Healthcare
Falls in healthcare settings are a significant patient safety issue with serious implications for patients, families, and healthcare systems. We bring those we love to a place to treat a medical problem and keep them safe, but then the patient suffers a fall. With luck, there is not injury but sometimes there is a serious…
How Do We Train Nurse Practitioners
I have been privileged to work with a lot of wonderful Nurse Practitioners as well as Physician Assistants. Yet, some recent reports have highlighted concerns about the quality and regulation of nurse practitioner (NP) education. A variety of concerns have been noted. Rapid Proliferation of Programs The number of schools offering advanced nursing degrees has…
Checklists Part 2 – Healthcare Adopting Checklists
As discussed previously, checklists are used in aviation, and at this point, there is no argument about this practice. It is the way it is. In healthcare, checklists implementation has been a slow process but is now an expectation in many settings. So how did we get here. Despite initial reluctance from physicians and other…
Checklists – Part 1
The use of safety tools such as checklists have been highlighted in books such as the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. This book (and in an article written by the same author– sorry it is behind a paywall) describes the value of using checklists to improve safety in a variety of industries, including in healthcare….
So You Need To Have Surgery…Do I Need A Bunch of Tests?
When you are getting ready to have a surgical procedure, it is common to have a variety of tests. These include both blood tests and others in preparation for the procedure. But are all these tests really necessary? Well…it depends. If you have a lot of medical problems, and the surgery is considered a “major”…