Patient Safety: Themes from PAN Conversations Oct 23, 2023

[Marion Knutson]

PAN members contributed to a fruitful discussion today regarding patient safety. Several major themes were brought up but an hour is not enough to go into detail. Let's keep the conversation going so we can make change happen together.

We'd love to hear from all PAN members regarding their thoughts on these questions and themes:

1. What are your main concerns regarding patient safety?
2. What are we doing to address patient safety?

Themes of patient safety that arose from today's discussion:

1. Access - access to services, timeliness of access and access to our own health data
2. Accountability – who is held responsible?
3. Listening – lack of listening and respect, causes: time pressures, lack of staff, bias (cultural safety, hidden disease, mental health, ageism)

Other thoughts? Solutions?

[Sandra Holdsworth]

@Alies-Maybee excellent discussion today on Patient Safety. The themes captured what our members were saying. Thanks to those who
shared their personal lived experiences, and for PAN providing a safe place to share.

To add to the conversation, the lack of integrated care within our healthcare can lead to many misdiagnosis, repeated testing, medication errors, and so much more.

[Alies Maybee]

@Marion-Knutson One thing that continues to alarm me is the lack of timely data sharing among providers. If they don't have the complete information about me, how can they accurately make a diagnosis or offer appropriate treatment? This is for me, a definite safety issue.

[Alies Maybee]

I will keep adding thoughts to this thread and hope others do too.

I was thinking about the healthcare supply chain which we all became more familiar with during COVID when vaccines, tests and PPE were not always available. This too is a safety issue. I happen to have a metal elbow. So what happens when that device is recalled for a defect, for example. Is there any tracking that device A-1223 is in Alies' elbow? I think not. Yikes! I am hopeful that will never happen but.... So we need to be aware that how our supply chains operate can indeed become a safety issue.

[Alies Maybee]

@Alies-Maybee Testing

[Donna Rubenstein]

testing today