Newswise — A new elective course in patient safety at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine is the first to give future doctors, nurses, dentists, physical and occupational therapists, nutritionists, pharmacists and public health students the opportunity to train and learn together.
The course, which uses real and simulated patients to help teach the students, is a collaborative effort of five UIC health science schools and is the first of its kind to be offered jointly to students from all the health sciences. It is one of several initiatives under the UIC Health Science Collaborative for Patient Safety Excellence.
The class begins Feb. 20.
"The key to improving patient safety is interdisciplinary training," said Dr. David Mayer, assistant professor of anesthesiology and assistant dean for curriculum in the UIC College of Medicine. "Delivery of high-quality patient care requires that physicians, nurses, pharmacists -- everyone involved with the care of a patient -- work together well. To optimize patient safety and reduce medical errors, we have to work as teams, communicate as teams, and train as teams."
Breakdowns in hospital processes and systems responsible for most medical errors can almost always be traced to a lack of effective communication and team work, said Dr. Tim McDonald, professor of anesthesiology and pediatrics and the University of Illinois Medical Center's associate chief medical officer for safety, risk management and quality.
"To really improve patient quality of care we have to improve communication," McDonald said. "Here, for the first time, we will be able to teach communication and teamwork at the undergraduate level as it's never been done."
Mayer and McDonald developed the course with Anne Gunderson, director of collaborative education and practice at the UIC College of Nursing.
The intensive two-week course will include small group discussion sessions on topics including error science, continuous quality improvement, safety regulatory and accreditation initiatives, microsystems, simulation training, communication skills and interdisciplinary teamwork.
Patients who suffered medical errors will share their experiences with the students so that they may gain an understanding of how the medical error impacted their lives. "Standardized" patients -- actors trained as patients -- will help the students practice newer methods of communicating a mistake.
In addition to giving the students an opportunity to analyze their own work, the educational modules will be made available to other health science schools interested in developing their own patient safety curriculum.
"UIC is in a unique position to take a leadership role in patient safety education and research," McDonald said, as one of only four universities in the country that has all six health science colleges on one campus.
The course will draw on national leaders in patient safety and faculty from different disciplines throughout the campus. The course will also incorporate a number of assessment tools to determine how well it is achieving its curricular objectives.
"All members of the health professions, whether physicians, nurses, pharmacists or physical therapists, have the same goal -- to deliver the best patient care possible. But we are seldom on the same page," said Gunderson. "This course represents UIC's commitment to a different approach to healthcare education, to finding what will work in the future."
RSS