Medical Group completes second annual patient safety awareness week

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Joe McFadden
  • 1st Special Operations Wing Public Affairs
HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. --  The 1st Special Operations Medical Group marked its second annual National Patient Safety Awareness Week with team-building training exercises and a colorful poster contest at the Hurlburt Field clinic March 7-13.
 
Twenty duty sections collaborated in the contest to illustrate this year's theme, "Let's Talk: Healthy Conversations for Safer Healthcare." The poster topics included medication education, medical jargon clarification and identification of signs of stress.

"The key parts of teamwork, communication and ownership were clearly demonstrated in the posters and simulated medical emergency scenarios," said Col. Dale Agner, 1st SOMDG commander. "It speaks a tremendous amount about the pride and respect from each section for safety and about what they do and their desire to serve our beneficiaries."

After first observing the awareness week last year, medical group personnel began this week by continuing to highlight the importance of providing higher quality and safer care.

"Our goals this week were to promote a culture of safety with everybody from our laboratory and clinical workers and commanders to our medical group," said Lt. Col. Terence Mitchell, 1st SOMDG chief of medical staff.

The medical group performed Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety, or TeamSTEPPS, which was developed by the Department of Defense Patient Safety Program in collaboration with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. TeamSTEPPS is an evidenced-based teamwork system aimed at optimizing patient outcomes by improving communication and other teamwork skills among healthcare professionals.

"One of our initiatives was to provide people a more hands-on, real-time training of what we do here," Colonel Mitchell said. "Our team went through the scenarios and protocol for safety very well while developing teamwork."

Healthcare providers, nurses and technicians conducted different scenarios on sophisticated mannequins that mimicked breathing and heartbeat patterns. Each case provided many opportunities for the groups to communicate and work as a group to save a life.

"It's only by exercising realistic scenarios with the actual equipment that we really get an accurate picture of what we can do to improve the process," said Colonel Agner.

The week concluded with a group commander's call and the announcement of the poster contest winners at the Hurlburt Field Clinic March 12. The commander's award for best overall poster went to Capt. Dana Baker, 1st Special Operations Aerospace Medicine Squadron, and Staff Sgt. Alissa Leviskia, 1st Special Operations Medical Operations Squadron, for their poster "Let's Talk Germs."

"I'd like to say how very proud I am of each and every one of you as you serve as patient safety champions every day," said Shawn Bolender, 1st SOMDG patient safety manager and safety week coordinator. "You make such a difference, and I commend you for what you do for patient safety."

Although National Patient Safety Awareness Week ended March 13, the posters will continue to be on display at the clinic.

"This was a grand event," Colonel Mitchell said. "I don't know how we're going to top this next year, but we are going to continue the culture of safety."

Patient Safety Awareness Week, established by the National Patient Safety Foundation, is a national education and awareness-building campaign for improving patient safety at the local level.

For more information about National Patient Safety Awareness Week, visit www.npsf.org.