From: AMNews, March 2004

During National Patient Safety Week, the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) board focuses its efforts on educating patients about how to protect themselves from medical errors.

“It shouldn’t just be hospital people talking to hospital people,” says board member Ilene Corina, “because they already know errors are happening.” The NPSF takes a proactive role in promoting patient safety by sending out tool kits to member hospitals that include posters, buttons and fact sheets on such topics as the role of the patient advocate, what individuals can do to increase patient safety and ways to prevent hospital-acquired infections and medical errors. Adds Mark Graber, MD, chief of medical service at Long Island’s Northport Veteran’s Hospital, “We’re trying to get people to think about [patient safety] before they’re a patient.”

Dr. Graber says that hospitals are encouraged to use National Patient Safety Week to highlight what they’ve done to increase patient safety. “Last year, probably several hundred hospitals participated. This year we expect several thousand.”