Course description

For healthcare professionals, there’s no higher priority than ensuring that patients do not experience harm as a result of the care they receive. But progress in this crucial area continues to be slow, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 public health emergency and its ongoing effect on the provision of care. For example, The Joint Commission was informed of 1,441 sentinel events in 2022 – a figure which represents a 19% increase over 2021 and a 78% increase since 2020.

It’s essential to understand that the responsibility to keep patients safe from harm rests not only on individual physicians, clinicians and staff, but also on the healthcare organization itself. Without a strong organizational commitment to patient safety and a coherent plan for responding to potential events of harm, it is unlikely that patient safety efforts will be as effective.

In this course, we will examine three key “strands” that, when woven together, should help form a strong defense against potential patient harm:

• Individual: What you, as a healthcare professional, can do to improve patient safety by maximizing diagnostic accuracy
• Team: How to build a strong team safety culture and how this impacts patient safety efforts
• Systems: How to develop systems-level safeguards, such as strong processes and policies, that help identify and address potential patient safety issues before harm occurs

This course is designed to provide a helpful introduction to a few tools and frameworks for thinking about patient safety, as well as how to leverage your work as an individual, a team member, and as part of a practice/facility to help keep patients safe from harm.

Learning objectives

At the conclusion of this educational activity, participants will be able to:

• Identify key strategies that support diagnostic accuracy
• Describe the importance of team safety culture in healthcare and its effects on patient safety effors
• Summarize the role of strong systems (e.g., policies and processes) in safeguarding patient safety

Target audience

Physician and clinician policyholders

Disclosure

There are no relevant financial relationships with ACCME-defined commercial interests for anyone who was in control of the content of this activity.

CME Information

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of the Illinois State Medical Society and ISMIE Mutual Insurance Company. The Illinois State Medical Society is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The Illinois State Medical Society designates this enduring material for a maximum of 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit^™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

The Illinois Nurse Practice Act rules deem CME credit provided by approved sponsors as acceptable to fulfill nursing continuing education requirements for licensure. Nurses may claim one contact hour per unit of CME in the state of Illinois.

MOC information

Successful completion of this CME activity, which includes participation in the evaluation component, enables the participant to earn up to 1 medical knowledge MOC point and patient safety MOC credit in the American Board of Internal Medicine's (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program. Participants will earn MOC points equivalent to the amount of CME credits claimed for the activity. It is the CME activity provider's responsibility to submit participant completion information to ACCME for the purpose of granting ABIM MOC credit.