Funds Expand Patient Care Mission
A $125,000 grant bestowed to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) from the Commonwealth Fund, in collaboration with the National Patient Safety Fund, will be used to enhance patient safety in both ambulatory and inpatient settings. Pat Reid Ponte, RN, DNSc, senior vice president and chief of Nursing at DFCI, and director of Nursing and Clinical Services of BWH’s Oncology Service, and Barbara Bierer, MD, senior vice president of Research at BWH, are spearheading the initiative.
The research project will evaluate the optimal composition of the team for Patient Safety Rounds and will evaluate the impact of a clinical safety champion (nurse clinicians) and of a patient/family safety champion (volunteers elicited from the DFCI-BWH Oncology Patient and Family Advisory Council).
“Having front-line clinicians and a patient or family member on rounds will likely add a valuable dimension to our understanding of how to better care for our patients and provide higher measures of safety and bring about safer systems of care,” said Reid Ponte.
A large part of the project has also been to include the creation of a patient safety education curriculum and other tools for organizations to use if they choose to implement patient safety rounds for nurses and others involved in patient care.
“There is potential for our developing patient safety model to be replicated in areas beyond Oncology,” said Reid Ponte.