15-16 October: Northwest Patient Safety Conference (Virtual, Free)

[Chris Johnston]

Happy to share this free, virtual conference on patient safety:

Jointly hosted by the Washington Patient Safety Coalition, Health Quality BC and Oregon Patient Safety Commission, the 23rd annual Northwest Patient Safety Conference takes place October 15-16, 2026.

The conference includes 14 hours of virtual sessions over two half-days. The live presentations are recorded and available for a year, so attendees can watch sessions they may have missed at their leisure.

Click here to register.

The theme is “Safety by Choice, Not by Chance - Practical Tools to Elevate Patient Safety”. The conference will feature presentations demonstrating innovative and functional approaches to improve patient and staff safety from institutions and your peers.

Topics include:

• Adapting, Implementing, and Evaluating Interprofessional Patient-and Family-Centered Rounds to Improve Safety and Experience.

• How electronic tools can be designed to enhance antibiotic stewardship, CLABSI, CAUTI, and/or C. difficile reduction goals.

• How to implement and measure a “good catch” program for success.

• What separates organizations that merely talk about safety from those that truly live it as told by a CEO in a highly reliable organization.

• Staffing decisions often rely on contentious methods such as fixed nurse-to-patient ratios. Learn about the Synergy Tool that informs real-time staffing decisions, ensuring a better fit between patient needs and nurse staffing assignments.

• Appling a Patient Voice Framework to mental health settings in ways that promote psychological safety and quality of care.

• Learn about the S.M.A.R.T program that facilitates continual readiness for accreditation, quality, and safety risk points to improve patient care.

• Twenty-six years since ‘To Err is Human’ was published evidence shows that safety improvements have been marginal. Learn about five actions that we can foster as a healthcare industry to facilitate a deeper, faster trajectory towards our true goal of becoming a highly reliable and ultra safe industry.

• Learn about an event surveillance system, in use now, that is the next frontier in safety analytics, where intelligent systems can reason through complex data the way an experienced patient safety professional would, connecting signals, weighing context, and helping teams get ahead of harm before it occurs.

• We are experiencing an unprecedented decline in vaccination rates. Learn about best practices to build trust and communicate to improve vaccine confidence from the top .

• And what is the consequence of lower vaccination rates? Learn about electronic tools to enhance antibiotic stewardship and a healthcare system’s successful process to reduce hospital acquired infections.

Click here to register.

Venue: Virtual
Dates: October 15 & 16
Time: 7:45 a.m. – 1 p.m. Pacific.

Fees:

• Patients, their families, and students, Free

• Healthcare professionals and anyone seeking continuing educational credits, $85.

Registration questions? Contact wpsc@qualityhealth.org