Patients Play a Vital Role in Patient Safety is an important video specifically intended for viewing by patients. By watching a variety of realistic scenarios and hearing suggestions outlined by leading patient safety experts, patients can learn practical ways to become more actively involved and informed about their care.

Five short scenarios involving patient interactions with their families and caregivers, effectively relay an important message: patients can and should contribute to their own care and safety. The scenarios emphasize common concerns of patients and the misconceptions that can hinder communication with caregivers. Patients will quickly relate to the situations that are portrayed and will learn how to provide the vital information that is needed to improve their care and to ask questions when they don’t understand.

Watch and learn as the following scenarios unfold:

• A middle-aged man, who was just admitted to the hospital, is frustrated and doesn’t understand why the nurse asks so many questions about his medical history, including alcohol consumption
• A distraught woman is relieved when her daughter offers to help by writing down questions and offering to stay when the doctor visits with news about her mother’s condition
• An observant patient questions her nurse about a blood pressure pill that doesn’t look like the ones she usually takes at home
• A young man recovering from surgery doesn’t want to complain, so he tries to hide his intensifying pain from the nurse
• A woman who is eager to go home has trouble paying attention to important discharge instructions
  

After each scenario, patient safety experts Ronni Solomon, Executive Vice President for ECRI, and Matthew Fricker, Program Director for the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, discuss six key principles that allow patients to be more actively involved in their own care:

1. Share vital information with all caregivers, including all medicines, all allergies, and all ailments
2. Ask questions about health problems and care
3. Ask for help from family and friends
4. Express your concerns
5. Alert caregivers if your symptoms change
6. Pay close attention to instructions

Patients Play a Vital Role in Patient Safety can make a major impact on the safety of the patients that your facility serves. It is the next logical step that all facilities should take in implementing effective patient safety programs. Hospitals are urged to show this important video on their patient education channel to patients before or during their hospital stay. Suggested places for viewing include preadmission testing locations, outpatient waiting areas, and inpatient rooms. Patients should be encouraged to consider how they can play an active role in their care and safety.

21 minutes

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For more information about this video, please contact HCIF by telephone at (215) 735-3895, or by e-mail at jmorris@dvhc.org