Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health has no greater responsibility than ensuring the safety of our patients, staff and community. Regardless of your role and where you work within LG Health, we all play a very important part in our ongoing efforts to build a culture of safety and a high reliability organization.
Along with shortening the time between identifying a problem and implementing a solution, our enhanced huddles are improving communication throughout the organization. This new approach – and you – are making a difference. Here are a few examples we have heard in our huddles of how actions by staff members across LG Health have kept our patients safe.
Two Emergency Department technicians encountered a patient without an identification band and acted promptly to ensure that they were caring for the right patient.
An occupational therapist noticed that a hospital patient’s bed alarm was not functioning properly and alerted the team, preventing a potential fall.
A clinical technician prevented a potentially dangerous safety issue by reporting and stopping the administration of a medication that was incorrectly prescribed to a patient recovering from cardiac surgery.
A customer service specialist denied office access to a person without an employee badge or other identification, exercising extra caution to keep patients and staff safe.
An ultrasound technician spoke up when she witnessed a potential safety issue in the operating room, ensuring that the appropriate surgical procedure was performed.
Our efforts to deliver safe, high-quality care to our patients and community really do depend on each one of us. All of these examples have one thing in common: A staff member noticed that something wasn’t right and had the courage to speak up. And there are many more examples that occur each day.
Your efforts every day are why LG Health is routinely recognized for quality. We are very proud of these recognitions and continually grateful for your dedication to patient safety. However, despite our best efforts, there are unfortunately times when we fall short of meeting the high patient safety standards we have set for ourselves. We take these events as an opportunity to learn and strive every day to do better.
Our patients and their families entrust us with their safety. They expect and deserve the best care, and you, our LG Health team, deserve the safest possible work environment. Thank you for all that you do and continue to do to keep our patients, community and each other safe every day.