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Thursday, May 24, 2007

Welcome to Our New Website

Thanks for visiting us at the Josie King Foundation's new and improved home on the web. I encourage you explore the various areas of the site, and also to send us your opinions on the site. As we worked to create this website, we were guided by the hundreds and hundreds of e-mails that I have received from patients, families, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, medical students, and nursing students.

These e-mails came from all corners of the world and covered an enormous range of thought and emotion, but all had one thing in common- a passionate interest in and commitment to improving patient safety. These e-mails come from people like me who have been affected by medical errors in one form or another and are looking for ways to make their hospital safer.

This new website responds to your needs. It is a place that provides help and information. A place where people can learn from experts in the field. A place to find the latest and most helpful websites, books, and articles about issues related to patient safety.

The new website also fulfills a vital need of the Foundation- to share information about the successful patient safety programs that we have supported. Good things are happening in patient safety all over the country. We want to help spread the word so that these good things take root and replicate in new places where the need is dire.

We also wanted the site to be a place where people could connect with others. Why should the interesting, wonderful, and sometimes heartbreaking e-mails come just to my inbox? Wouldn't it be great to pass them along so that thousands of others can read, react and connect? Maybe by creating this online community, doctors, nurses, and families can come together and solve problems or help each other.

I think this website will achieve some of those goals. It will continue to evolve as we react to your ideas and the progress shaping patient safety as a field. We would really love your feedback- good or bad. It all helps.

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posted by JosieKingFoundation @ 3:23 PM  

5 Comments:

  • At May 30, 2007 at 9:53 PM , Blogger Miles202 said...

    Sorrel,

    The website is very impressive. It is one of the best sites I have seen in this area and am so pleased you are able to offer such wonderful resources.

    Best,
    Miles

     

  • At December 10, 2007 at 10:51 PM , Blogger Unknown said...

    Sorrel,
    I was looking for your email address. I came across the DVD Remaking American Medicine. I was touched by the DVD as well as your story.
    I am an ICU nurse that is now a Nursing Instructor. I was so taken with your story I am showing the students the Dvd. Safety starts in school. It is something taught and reinforced early. Teaching Students to be assertive patient advocates and helping them develop a sense of empowerment is crucial and it needs to start early in their educational process. I want to thank you for your work and let you know Josie's story will be a platform for my safety lectures.

    Brian Halpern RN BSN
    Renton Technical College
    Renton Washington

     

  • At January 15, 2008 at 5:38 PM , Blogger Dr. Reed D. Gelzer said...

    I was recently referred to your website by a physician and mutual peer who has worked in patient safety areas for many years. In a recent collaboration we learned we had something else in common, we had both lost loved ones to mistakes made by health care personnel. As a systems analyst, I am disposed to think of these matters in, not surprisingly, particular ways. In a recent conference discussion, a number of conferees commented on the stability of the health care industry's systems and myriad standard operating procedures despite the fact that so many are dissatisfied with both the costs and the results, and that so many suffer ill outcomes, in some cases tragic ones. How much of this stability is because so many suffer in silence or their suffering gets absorbed without creating change-driving impact?

    Here is my question: are we ready for a "truth and reconciliation" approach to errors as part of the destabilization of standard operating procedures and organizational cultures that prove to be unsafe? Are we ready to embrace the idea that change also requires making the status quo untenable by giving the injured permission and means to convert their suffering into a voice that cannot be ignored or absorbed without a meaningful response?

    Your site and your work highlight your efforts to do this by means that particularly convey the human cost of errors and channel the sadness and revulsion into efforts that improve communications access and speed. What place is there for capturing the tragic experiences of others too, to encourage others to not tolerate the intolerable and to put faces and therefore greater voice and force to the 50,000 to 100,000 otherwise nameless annually killed?

    I look forward to discussion on your thoughts on such a further initiative.

    Reed D. Gelzer, MD, MPH, CHCC
    Advocates for Documentation Integrity and Compliance
    Wallingford, CT

     

  • At October 13, 2010 at 5:16 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Hi Sorrel,
    I started being part of PFAC (Patient Family Advisory Council)at Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport, CT. And one of our councils just let me borrow your book. To be honest with you, I am not a reader. I didn't think I was going to even finish the book! but once I started reading it.. I got hooked! I just finished it today, I was reading it during the time I waited to pick up my daughter @ school. And I finished it!!!!!
    Being part of the Council at the Hospital helps me see things in a different way. I had a misscarriage last year after 12 weeks, and my experience at the hospital wasn't the best. So instead of me taking legal action, I decided to accept the hospital's invitation to be part of the PFAC, and I took this opportunity as a way to heal my lost and my experience there. Now, reading your book it gives me a different perspective and makes me want to be able to be really involved in Patient Safety.
    Thanks for sharing your story. You and Josie's story are already making a big difference in the world.
    Keep up the good work! God bless you and your family.
    V.T

     

  • At October 14, 2010 at 10:56 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Dear V.T,

    Thank you for your kind words. I am sorry for your loss but am glad to hear that you are taking that loss and working to change things. Give my best to your "family Advisory Council" at Bridgeport Hospital and tell them to keep up the good work.

    Many thanks and my best to you.

    Sorrel

     

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