The Jewish Healthcare Foundation’s Patient Safety Fellowship will offer a unique curriculum this summer to explore the challenges and opportunities facing senior residential living and senior care. After the disruption of COVID-19, options for elders must embrace creative solutions that help older adults age well and safely in a range of settings. Fellows, working across disciplines, will explore existing and conceptual models for transforming our community and healthcare systems that maximize quality of life for elders and families.

Within teams, fellows will identify core elements to design a new model that enhances current systems to maximize safety and quality, and then they will pitch how the adoption and implementation of their model would address challenges of our current systems.

The Patient Safety Fellowship is a dynamic educational program of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, and Health Careers Futures.

The Fellowship aims to foster the healthcare leaders of tomorrow—leaders who respond to rapid change and discovery, apply an interdisciplinary approach, and strive to continually improve health care and patient safety.

This summer, the Fellowship is focusing on the overall response to COVID-19 in the U.S.. Over the course of the 9-week program, fellows will engage with a variety of expert speakers in the fields of public health, infectious disease, safety science, and emergency preparedness, as well as leaders of healthcare systems and local innovators adapting to the crisis. As the fellows engage with one another and gain insight from the different lens of the pandemic, they will synthesize their lessons and apply them in designing a response to a case study/scenario of a healthcare outbreak or disaster.

Achieve the Triple Aim of healthcare quality improvement by providing patients with the information  on their care plans but encouraging them to ask “why?” In regards to physician orders. Additionally, encourage providers to be smarter with the care plans created for their patients by thinking more critically about what they are ordering.  

I dream of a world where assault by providers in birth doesn't occur, and every procedure is done with genuinely informed consent. Until that time people are suffering at the hands of providers who are physically assaulting them, not asking for consent, mocking, and terrorizing laboring people. When people find the courage to speak out, they are silenced and told to be grateful for having birthed a child. The trauma and PTSD they suffer carries into their lives long past that one day. We must acknowledge that assault during birth is sexual assault and that no means no when it is said to anyone anywhere even in a hospital, even if you are in labor. Providers must be held accountable, but they won't be until as a country we can say medical sexual assault and be taken seriously

Pregnant women, no matter their socioeconomic status, should have equal rights and access to the best care. We hope to narrow down the potential causes of increased mortality rates and design unique solutions to address gaps in quality and access to care. 

Connect 4 Care calls on heathcare leaders to adopt one system-wide electronic health record (EHR) platform within thier healthcare system in order to alleviate burnout among healthcare professionals and improve patient outcomes.  

Seniors and those with mobility issues are often forgotten during disasters. With the disruption to basic services (electricity, water, transportation, etc...), previously vulnerable populations face dire situations. 

This group seeks to identify best practices for healthcare facilities to assist those most vulnerable during disasters. Specifically, this group will highlight practices seen at critical infrastructure sites, green buildings, and on-site energy generation facilities. 

Cover Photo Source: https://inhabitat.com/solar-powered-teaching-hospital-currently-under-construction-in-haiti/

Older adults can be easily overwhelmed with the name and amounts of medication required during hospitalization and in the community. I hope to create a tool to serve elderly adults through hospitalization and medication management at home. From first hand experience, sometimes just knowing the right questions can go a long way!

According the a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, 96% of executives, clinical leaders, and clinicians agree that physician burnout is a serious problem in health care. More than 50% of all physicians including residents suffer from burnout. Coupled with a projected shortage of 50,000 physicians by 2020, this degree of burnout will continue to impact quality, access to care and  patient safety. There have been many studies that have linked physician stress to medical errors (3^rd leading cause of death in the U.S.). Decreased quality of care has been cited as the leading reason to address physician burnout.

Despite the recognition that physician burnout is a serious and growing threat to our health care system, there is very little that is being done to mitigate this problem. The answers include both organizational changes that allow physician to function at the top of their licensure as well as personal strategies targeting increased resilience and better stress management.

Mindfulness-based interventions can be a powerful tool for decreasing physician burnout and improving overall health and well-being, with a positive effect on patient safety and quality of care. Mindfulness refers to the ability to pay attention to the present-moment with acceptance and receptivity and mindfulness interventions have been shown in initial studies to reduce stress and burnout.

What is particularly exciting is that we have collaborated with David Cresswell from Carneige Mellon University whose lab is one of the first groups to show that mindfulness interventions can improve brain stress resilience circuits and biomarkers of stress-related disease in multiple patient populations (Creswell et al., 2016). This work has had substantial impact and resulted in well-publicized coverage in fora such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Today Show.

We have formed Pittsburgh based initiative that focuses on physician wellness and patient safety. This initiative includes a unique collaboration between Carnegie-Mellon researchers and UPMC physicians. We will conduct a landmark study investigating the effects of a brief mindfulness based intervention to improve brain stress resilience circuits and biomarkers of inflammation among a high-stress physician population. We hope to publish the results in top journals and more importantly promote our region as a leading innovator in improving physician wellness and patient safety. Given the vast expertise of healthcare, research and medical education in Western PA, our study will have significant local and national impact for both physicians and patients.

When patients are selecting a surgeon to perform a procedure it would be helpful for the patient to know the surgeon's personal history of complications when performing similar surgeries so that the patient could select the "best" surgeon.

Care coordination mistakes are costly... and not just in terms of financial expenses. Some of the most common care coordination mistakes are also major culprits for death and exacerbated patient health problems. U.S. News & World Reportindicates, “Medical errors are [the] third leading cause of death in the U.S. 10 percent of U.S. deaths are due to preventable medical mistakes" such as: Documentation errors  Communication Disconnects Lack of Coordination Neglecting Follow-ups Delays