Full Table of Contents
_______________
Abbreviated
Table of Contents
Home Page
Patient Safety
Silence vs
Safety
Silenced
White wall
of Silence
Silencing
Conflict Of
Interest
Psychology of
Providers
Subjectivity
Blacklisting
Nurse survey
Loyalty
Mobbing and
bullying
Trust Us
Defensive
documenting
Report Rate
Risk
managemnt
SOAP
Management
Hospitals
Crime in
medicine
Sexual Abuse
Liability
Limitations
Free Speech
for Patients
Exploitation
OSMB Medical
Boards
Mammography
solutions
Medical errors
Medical
Complaints
One number
Links
Injured patients who want to help and be heard, click here.
Thomas Jefferson said that given the choice between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would choose to have newspapers.
In medicine we have government without newspapers. Patients cannot find out what they need to know to make informed choices. No one in medicine records or reports the information patients need to know the most. So patients will have to.
A Symbol for Patient Safety
Click here for stencils and instructions for putting the symbol on sidewalks
The 99,000 patients who die each year because health care workers infected them (according to the Centers for Disease Control) are dying not because of errors, but because of a calculation. The means to bring that number to zero are known and available, but our caregivers calculated that it would take too much time. That is not the perspective patients have on that matter. Our perspective should be in our symbol. That is one reason why the symbol for patient safety should be a chalk outline. Our symbol should say that letting us die in order to save time is not okay with us.
It is easy to recognize the chalk outline because it looks like
someone shot John Travolta. Or like someone shouting for help, or mercy.
The right hand is raised and pointed. The left is lowered and spread. It has a
waist like someone physically fit. It was a vibrant, healthy, foot-tapping person until he/she sought
medical care.
Click image for a larger printable version.
Legalities
I drew the chalk outline. I am not copyrighting it. You are free to use it to bring attention to patient safety in any way you want. If possible use light blue chalk in straight lines. The angularity not only makes it distinguishable from whales and porpoises, but also indicates that something terrible happened to this patient who was soft and round a short time ago.
If someone tells you that you cannot draw a chalk outline on a public sidewalk to speak about patient safety, inform them that in the USA this is free expression and as such is protected by the first amendment (as long as it is chalk or something equally temporary). Issues similar to this have won in the Supreme Court of the United States in the recent past. It is protected speech and you have a right to do it even though they can make it costly to defend.
Their egos and reputations are not worth more than our lives.
Be careful about identifying specific
persons or institutions or they may sue you. Drawing it on
a public sidewalk in front of one hospital where you were injured could cause
problems for you. Drawing it in front of one where you did not have any problem
should be safe. Drawing it in front of
ten should be safer.
Unfortunately, not being able to identify where problems occur reduces the public debate to unfounded generalities. It's as though people going to restaurants were not allowed to tell anyone where they got food poisoning. If a lecher in a hospital intentionally harms you, you are not allowed to warn other patients about the predator. All you can do is put a symbol on your car or your web site or on a sidewalk that doesn't identify the location or perpetrator.
See Freedom of Speech for Patients
A possible sign for carrying in a march can be seen here.
Please don't use spray paint or anything permanent on a sidewalk or other public place. If it is permanent, it is graffiti and is more likely to alienate than to persuade (and might be illegal). Christo left his mammoth exhibit of 7,500 Gates in Central Park in Manhattan for less than three weeks because it is special and poignant if it is rare and of short duration. Chalk outlines still on the ground after 3 months annoy even other injured patients and may work against us. It is important not to be obnoxious to our own constituency.
4.1% of sentinel events in medicine are
assault/rape/homicide according to JCAHO
Another reason the symbol is a chalk outline is the total disregard of the medical profession of the crime rate in medicine. Some of the hundreds of thousands of patients who unnecessarily die each year (see Preventable Deaths) were killed intentionally. Not mercy killing - just murder. Even though there is a murder rate in medicine, as yet we have not seen one single patient safety initiative with even a mention of the crime rate in medicine or any thought of how to address it. Is there a darker moment for patient safety than health care workers intentionally injuring, or even killing, patients? Shouldn't we do something to keep medicine from sweeping awareness of it under the carpet?
Four times as many Americans die unnecessarily in health care each year than died in the entire 30 years of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. Perhaps as a monument to them a few hundred thousand footprint-size chalk patient safety symbols should be placed on routes leading to state capitol buildings where they have passed liability limitations that protect the perpetrators even of murder in medicine (if you think that's confusing criminal and civil law, click here).