I AM PATIENT SAFETY
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I AM Patient Safety 2021 Winners with the IAPS hero     

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  I AM PATIENT SAFETY Achievement Awards

The I AM Patient Safety award is an annual contest that recognizes and celebrates healthcare staff for their individual or collective commitment to and influences on patient safety. It is a chance for us to celebrate the things that go right each day in healthcare to make our patients safer.


We at the Patient Safety Authority (PSA) invited healthcare facilities to submit nominations of individuals or teams who have made a difference in patient safety. We received 173 nominations!


We are happy to announce this year's winners.

  • Ambulatory Surgery Facility: Allegheny Health Network- Ambulatory Surgery Center Division, Bethel Park, Monroeville, Wexford, and Westmoreland Endo
  • Conquering COVID: Temple University Hospital COVID-19 Team, Temple University Hospital
  • Focus on the Patient: UPMC Carlisle Intensive Care Unit
  • Individual Impact: Kelly Romano, Einstein Medical Center Montgomery
  • Long-Term Care Facility: Donna Gerofsky, Moravian Manor
  • Nationwide Warriors: PTSD/Emergence Delirium Training & Education Team: Michael Boland, David Julian, Amanda Beckstead, and William Pileggi, Veterans Administration, Pittsburgh Health System
  • Physician Offices: Alyssa Parker, Lehigh Valley Physician's Group, LHVN ExpressCare-Fogelsville
  • Safety Story (Near Miss or Close Call): Brianna Thompson, UPMC St. Margaret
  • Transparency and Safety in Healthcare: WellSpan Health Continuing Care Services
  • Executive Director's Choice Award: Lisa Conrad, Surgical Oncology; Amy Magagna, Surgical Oncology; and the 3rd Floor Surgical Oncology Nursing Team, Fox Chase Cancer Center-Temple Health

 

Judging

Judges select individuals and teams from nominations, submitted by healthcare facilities throughout Pennsylvania and now the country, for their individual and/or team commitment to improving patient safety.

  • Evident commitment to patient safety
  • Focus on high-level changes (for example, barriers and forced functions) and replicability
  • Indicative of strong patient safety culture in the facility 
  • Initiative taken by individual/group

Award Categories

    1.    AMBULATORY SURGERY FACILITY separately licensed in Pennsylvania

    • The winner will be an individual or a team who advanced surgical safety
    • Examples include improving the time-out process, involving patients in an improvement project, and developing an innovative intervention to prevent surgical site infections

    2.     CONQUERING COVID-19

    • The winner will be an individual or a team who made an impact fighting the pandemic
    • Examples include providing exceptional frontline care, developing surveillance strategies, creating innovative care practices, and establishing successful prevention techniques

     3.     FOCUS ON THE PATIENT

    • The winner will be an individual or a team who demonstrated an extraordinary consideration for a patient’s physical or mental well-being
    • Examples include utilizing patient/family input to effect change, integrating patient/family perspectives into care practices, and developing innovative risk-stratification processes to identify high-risk patients

     4.     IMPROVING DIAGNOSIS

    • The winner will be an individual or a team who enhanced the diagnostic process or made considerable effort to reduce diagnostic error
    • Examples include improving patient/family communication around the diagnostic process; expanding the diagnostic team with nonproviders, e.g., nurses, therapists, techs, and patients; crafting technological solutions to reduce misdiagnosis; and improving the diagnosis and management of a medical condition

    5.     INDIVIDUAL IMPACT- GOING ABOVE AND BEYOND

    • The winner will be an individual who made a significant impact on a patient or their facility
    • Examples include taking steps to provide exceptional patient care, providing a heartfelt moment for a patient/colleague, creating a fun/innovative care environment, and stories that makes you say “Wow!”

    6.     LONG-TERM CARE FACILITY separately licensed

    • The winner will be an individual or a team who advanced patient safety at a long-term care facility within Pennsylvania
    • Examples include identifying and communicating a safety concern, initiating a new program/process to prevent infections, involving residents in a patient safety initiative, and reducing the rate of a healthcare-associated infection or other safety-related metric

    7.     SAFETY STORY (NEAR MISS OR CLOSE CALL)

    • Near misses are circumstances that could have caused patient harm but did not
    • The winner will be in individual or a team who intervened before an injury occurred.
    • Examples include reporting an event catalyzed facility-wide change, implementing a new inspection process following equipment failure, and identifying a potentially catastrophic situation

    8.     TRANSPARENCY AND SAFETY IN HEALTHCARE

    • The winner will be an individual or a team who improved transparency to advance patient safety
    • Examples include demonstrating commitment to transparency by leadership, broadly disseminating lessons learned from an event, designing and implementing a new process to link disclosure and system improvement, and employing an integrated team approach to safety and transparency

    9.     NATIONWIDE WARRIORS

    • Open to any individual or team in the United States
    • The winner will be an individual or a team who went above and beyond to advance patient safety, developed innovative harm reduction strategies, or created a nurturing care environment for their patients

    10.     PHYSICIAN OFFICES

    • Open to Pennsylvania medical offices independently licensed or part of a larger health system
    • The winner will be an individual or team who demonstrated the importance of patient safety in the physician office setting

Past Winners

2020 Patient Safety Winners 

2019 Patient Safety Winners

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