Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor's Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out (Pronovost, Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals)

SUMMARY: A leading innovator in patient safety shows how to save lives While Americans spend more on health care than any other country in the western world, our hospitals and clinics kill more patients. Patient safety expert Dr. Peter Pronovost is working to remedy that, by changing the way hospitals and doctors function day to day. In fact, his ideas are already saving people. By introducing a five-step checklist that standardizes a common ICU procedure, Dr. Pronovost has decreased the rate of infection-and as a result, unnecessary deaths- across the country by 90 percent. Improving health care is a priority for all Americans, but it's a daunting subject. In this book, Dr. Pronovost makes reform relatable, easy to understand, and inspiring. With opinions and anecdotal evidence from patients, health care professionals, and Dr. Pronovost's own experience, as well as comprehensive research on medical procedures and policies, Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals shows how simple steps can fix our hospitals and improve patient care. SUMMARY: A leading innovator in patient safety shows how to save lives While Americans spend more on health care than any other country in the western world, our hospitals and clinics kill more patients. Patient safety expert Dr. Peter Pronovost is working to remedy that, by changing the way hospitals and doctors function day to day. In fact, his ideas are already saving people. By introducing a five-step checklist that standardizes a common ICU procedure, Dr. Pronovost has decreased the rate of infection-and as a result, unnecessary deaths- across the country by 90 percent. Improving health care is a priority for all Americans, but it's a daunting subject. In this book, Dr. Pronovost makes reform relatable, easy to understand, and inspiring. With opinions and anecdotal evidence from patients, health care professionals, and Dr. Pronovost's own experience, as well as comprehensive research on medical procedures and policies, Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals shows how simple steps can fix our hospitals and improve patient care. The inspiring story of how a leading innovator in patient safety found a simple way to save countless lives. First, do no harm-doctors, nurses and clinicians swear by this code of conduct. Yet in hospitals and doctors' offices across the country, errors are made every single day - avoidable, simple mistakes that often cost lives. Inspired by two medical mistakes that not only ended in unnecessary deaths but hit close to home, Dr. Peter Pronovost made it his personal mission to improve patient safety and make preventable deaths a thing of the past, one hospital at a time. Dr. Pronovost began with simple improvements to a common procedure in the ER and ICU units at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Creating an easy five-step checklist based on the most up-to-date research for his fellow doctors and nurses to follow, he hoped that streamlining the procedure itself could slow the rate of infections patients often died from. But what Dr. Pronovost discovered was that doctors and nurses needed more than a checklist: the day-to-day environment needed to be more patient-driven and staff needed to see scientific results in order to know their efforts were a success. After those changes took effect, the units Dr. Pronovost worked with decreased their rate of infection by 70%. Today, all fifty states are implementing Dr. Pronovost's programs, which have the potential to save more lives than any other medical innovation in the past twenty-five years. But his ideas are just the beginning of the changes being made by doctors and nurses across the country making huge leaps to improve patient care. In Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals, Dr. Pronovost shares his own experience, anecdotal stories from his colleagues at Johns Hopkins and other hospitals that have made his approach their own, alongside comprehensive research-showing readers how small changes make a huge difference in patient care. Inspiring and thought provoking, this compelling book shows how one person with a cause really can make a huge difference in our lives.

A leading innovator in patient safety shows how to save lives While Americans spend more on health care than any other country in the western world, our hospitals and clinics kill more patients. Patient safety expert Dr. Peter Pronovost is working to remedy that, by changing the way hospitals and doctors function day to day. In fact, his ideas are already saving people. By introducing a five-step checklist that standardizes a common ICU procedure, Dr. Pronovost has decreased the rate of infection-and as a result, unnecessary deaths- across the country by 90 percent. Improving health care is a priority for all Americans, but it's a daunting subject. In this book, Dr. Pronovost makes reform relatable, easy to understand, and inspiring. With opinions and anecdotal evidence from patients, health care professionals, and Dr. Pronovost's own experience, as well as comprehensive research on medical procedures and policies, Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals shows how simple steps can fix our hospitals and improve patient care.

First, do no harm. Doctors, nurses, and clinicians swear by this code of conduct. Yet, medical errors are made every single day-avoidable mistakes that often cost lives. Inspired by two such mistakes, Dr. Peter Pronovost made it his personal mission to improve patient safety and make preventable deaths a thing of the past, one hospital at a time. Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals shows how Dr. Pronovost started a revolution by creating a simple checklist that standardized a common ICU procedure. His reforms are being implemented in all fifty states and have saved hundreds of lives by cutting hospital-acquired infection rates by 70%. Atul Gawande profiled Dr. Pronovost's reforms in a New Yorker article and his bestselling book The Checklist Manifesto is based upon Dr. Pronovost's success in patient safety. But Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals is the real story: an inspiring, thought-provoking, accessible insider's narrative about how doctors and nurses are improving patient care for all Americans, today.