2006 Patient Safety Learning Collaborative"From Hand to Hand: Strengthening the Connection" Participants in the 2006 IHA Patient Safety Learning Collaborative "From Hand to Hand: Strengthening the Connection," attended their second Learning Session in May. More than 100 health care professionals representing 21 hospitals and 4 health systems from across Illinois participated in a day-long program to problem-solve and share lessons learned through their initial work on handoff communication, and to develop new skills to improve the quality of communication among caregivers in all situations, not just handoff opportunities. Todd King, nationally-known speaker with the Utah-based company VitalSmarts, presented on "Silence Kills - Crucial Conversations for Healthcare" based on the 2004 study conducted by VitalSmarts in partnership with the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. Crucial conversations are those that need to occur but tend to be avoided because they deal with broken rules, mistakes, lack of support, incompetence, poor teamwork, disrespect, and micromanagement. The study demonstrated a strong relationship between the quality of a crucial conversation to quality of care, patient safety, medical errors, staff commitment, employee satisfaction, discretionary effort, and turnover. Participants gained awareness of barriers to handoff communication that may be related to a critical conversation and learned techniques that could be used to lead a crucial conversation. | |
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