Spotlight on Patient Safety: Launch of UAE's First Patient Safety Program Benefits Patients and Staff at Tawam Hospital

Tawam Hospital, a JCI–accredited organization in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has successfully launched a program to promote patient safety within the hospital and local community.

As part of the program, Tawam has organized a new safety awareness campaign that will run through 2009. The first part of the annual awareness campaign ran 2–5 February with various educational activities and awards.

Steven A. Matarelli, Ph.D., RN, Chief Clinical Officer at Tawam said the campaign is comprehensive and in line with JCI’s patient safety guidelines. "The safety campaign will educate staff members on how to effectively use the International Patient Safety Goals (click here for more information) and to improve patient safety,” says Matarelli. “It will consist of various events and activities throughout 2009 and will exemplify and promote safe, high quality patient care in accordance with the JCI guidelines."

Tawam’s patient safety awareness campaign, which was conducted in affiliation with Johns Hopkins International, included several educational activities. To maximize awareness about the campaign slogans entitled “Patient Safety Top Priority” were placed in numerous locations around the hospital, employees were sent SMS (text) messages with safety awareness tips, and employee pay slips included reminders about the campaign. In addition, Tawam held a Continuing Medical Education session about patient safety and played a patient safety video in patient waiting areas.

"With thousands of deaths each year around the world due to preventable medical errors, patient safety can no longer be pushed aside,” Matarelli says. “Patient safety is an explicit organizational goal that should be embraced by management and highlighted throughout the year to every member of staff and to every patient that comes through our doors."

Almost all departments at Tawam Hospital participate in monthly observations for hand hygiene, in accordance with one of theJCI International Patient Safety Goals. All disciplines are observed, to include nursing, physicians, ancillary works, and support staff. The majority of the observers are the 47 specialists known as Infection Control Link. Infection Control Link reports observations to managers and administration either quarterly or semi-annually so they can track and trend their compliance results. In the past few months, some observers exchanged departments in order improve inter-rater reliability and commented on why compliance with hand hygiene requirements was low. The most common reasons given for noncompliance included the following:
• Staff did not know they were being watched
• Staff did not enough time to clean their hands
• Staff perceived that their hands were not visibly dirty
• Staff just forgot to clean their hands

Tawam’s campaign also included the following medication-related activities:
• Checking medication for expiration dates.
• Distributing medication safety pamphlets
• Having a pharmacist available to answer patient questions in the main lobby
• An hour-long session on medication safety for all of Tawam's pharmacists