my cart |

Penguin.com (usa)

(To view entire post, click on the "Read more" link under each post)

Peter Pronovost & Eric Vohr, authors of Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals, our guest bloggers for the week of 2/22

Mon, 02/22/2010

(View entire post here)

Peter Pronovost, Ph.D., M.D., (pictured, left) and Eric Vohr (pictured, right) are guest bloggers during the week of February 22nd. If you have any questions for Peter Pronovost or Eric Vohr, add a comment to any of their posts. Here is some more information about Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor's Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out:

Read an excerpt from the book and view the authors' tour dates.

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.

About Peter Pronovost

PETER PRONOVOST, Ph.D, M.D., is a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and serves as medical director for the Johns Hopkins Center for Innovation in Quality Patient Care.

About Eric Vohr

ERIC VOHR was formerly the assistant director of media relations at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and he teaches technical writing at Johns Hopkins University.

Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor's Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out
Peter Pronovost & Eric Vohr - authors