Health care organizations across the country are working to make health care safety a priority. So no matter where you work, you'll see initiatives such as:
* the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's 100,000 Lives Campaign (the first national effort to promote saving a specified number of lives by a certain date-June 14, 2006)
* the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organization's National Patient Safety Goals for 2006 and the "do-not-use" list of abbreviations
* the Institute for Safe Medication Practices' list of high-alert medications.
As a nurse, you can help support and strengthen these initiatives by becoming familiar with them and by staying up-to-date. One way to do that is to bookmark a few key Web sites and access them routinely to see what's new. Here's a list of sites I recommend for reliable, helpful information.
[black right pointing small triangle] Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) http://www.ahrq.gov PSNet (Patient Safety Network) http://www.psnet.ahrq.gov
[black right pointing small triangle] Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Patient Safety News http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/psn/index.cfm
[black right pointing small triangle] Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) http://www.ihi.org 100,000 Lives Campaign http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Programs/Campaign/
[black right pointing small triangle] Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) http://www.ismp.org List of high-alert medications http://www.ismp.org/Tools/highalertmedications.pdf
[black right pointing small triangle] Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) http://www.jointcommission.org "Do-not-use" list http://www.jointcommission.org/PatientSafety/DoNotUseList Joint Commission International Center for Patient Safety http://www.jcipatientsafety.org National Patient Safety Goals for 2006 http://www.jointcommission.org/PatientSafety/NationalPatientSafetyGoals/
[black right pointing small triangle] National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) http://www.npsf.org
-Anne Woods, RN, CRNP, APRN,BC, MSN
Clinical Director, Nursing2006