The Division of Quality and Safety has fostered a culture of safety throughout Hopkins Children’s.  A collaborative team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, allied health professionals and staff are devoted to providing high-quality patient care in this age of complex, systems-driven medicine that can lead to errors. Among the safety initiatives now in place at Hopkins Children’s are:

• Quality and safety rounds.
• Ensuring handoffs are handled well during shift changes.
• Efforts to improve upon pediatric resuscitation led to the establishment of the Johns Hopkins University Simulation Center, which improves training for medical students and house staff using medical mannequins to improve patient care.
•  An initiative ─ the Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program (CUSP) ─ to integrate safety and quality practices into daily work.Patient Safety-Net, a web-based tracking system regarding patient safety concerns.
•  The initiation of a pediatric hospitalist program composed of four hospitalists, to manage and monitor medical issues for patients admitted for surgery.
• Safety attitude questionnaires and surveys to identify obstacles to a culture of safety.

Hopkins Children’s also hopes to make better use of clinical applications such as electronic patient records, and is studying the best use of these systems to reduce the potential for harm if used incorrectly.  When properly implemented, they can speed up and improve the delivery of healthcare to the patient’s bedside, make medicine safer, and save time and resources.  Other safety initiatives designed to reduce errors through better technology include:

• A chemotherapy audit program in oncology to prevent chemo errors.
• Computerized syringe pumps that deliver standardized solutions to help reduce human error in IV administration.
• A computerized ordering system-Provider Order Entry- that calculates dosages, cross-references drugs with patient allergies and existing prescriptions, and alerts providers to drug-to-drug interactions and dosing errors.
• A web-based system for ordering total parenteral nutrition (TPN) that identifies and preemptively eliminates potentially serious calculation errors.