The opaque era when hospitals rarely talked about mistakes made on their watch may be on its way out. Dr. Michael Apkon, president and CEO of SickKids, wants people to know that serious errors happen in every hospital. Instead of pretending they don’t, he says it’s time to not only put the issue on the table, but to adopt a broad, bold plan for stopping unnecessary infections, workplace injuries, surgical and medical errors and the host of other problems that happen regularly in health-care settings.
“Every hospital experiences deaths that were preventable. It’s just a question of whether they are seeing them that way, whether they are having the right discussion to be able to learn from those,” Apkon said during an interview in his office last week.
SickKids has partnered with the University Health Network, which consists of numerous hospitals throughout Toronto, to embark on a major safety initiative called Caring Safely.
Full article at: Globe and Mail