Patient & Family Involvement = Better Healthcare

Did you know that playing an active part in your medical treatment can make a difference in the quality and safety of the care you receive?

The week of March 7–13 is National Patient Safety Awareness Week

At Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC), patients have several options to participate in their personal treatment. SVMC feels that patients are important parts of the healthcare team and that their opinions, comments, and questions matter. Patients are encouraged to Speak Up to their care providers; a patient or family member can call a Condition H; or they can call SVMC’s patient advocate.

Speak Up

First, patients at SVMC are encouraged to Speak Up about their treatment. By asking questions, learning all they can about their condition, and actively participating in care decisions, patients can work most effectively with their healthcare team. Key things for patients to keep in mind as part of the Speak Up program are listed in the box to the right.

Condition H

Second, SVMC offers Condition H. Condition H, or Condition Help, refers to a program started by Sorrel King, whose beloved 18-month-old daughter Josie died in 2001 in one of the best hospitals in the country, due to poor communication. King, through the Josie King Foundation, established the Josie King Pediatric Patient Safety Program at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

The program at Johns Hopkins was designed to improve the quality of communication between families and caregivers and to provide safeguards for families if they feel their loved one is not getting sufficient medical attention.

That program led King to work with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) to create the Josie King Call Line — or Condition H. The idea is modeled on the concept of the Rapid Response Team of caregivers who rush to a patient’s bedside if a nurse or other caregiver feel a patient’s condition is wrongly deteriorating.

Condition H allows patients and families a way to alert a team similar to a Rapid Response Team who will come and assess the patient’s situation. At SVMC, a patient or family member only has to call the operator to initiate a Condition H.

“It’s meant to be a back-up tool,” stated Mary Anne Cushing, a registered nurse and the patient advocate at SVMC. “Sometimes there are human limitations that interfere with a patient’s care. Condition H helps to fill in the gaps brought on by those limitations.”

SVMC's Patient Advocate

Cushing’s role as patient advocate is also an important part of providing quality and safe care at SVMC. Patients or family members can ask to speak with her if they are having difficulty communicating with their caregivers or if they just don’t know where to start to get their questions answered or their concerns heard.

“Our goal at SVMC is that our patients receive the highest quality, safest care available,” said Cushing. “We realize that sometimes the patient is in the best position to identify something we’ve overlooked or that the patient may have some information that is vital to his or her care. We want their experience to be the best it can be the best it can be under the circumstances of being in the hospital.”