Improving patient safety in radiology: a work in progress.
The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences, including successes and failures, as well as the ongoing process of developing and implementing a safety program in a large pediatric radiology department. Building a multidisciplinary pediatric radiology safety team requires successful recruitment of team members, selection of a team leader, and proper and ongoing training and tools, and protected time. Challenges, including thorough examples, are presented on improving pediatric radiology safety intradepartmentally, interdepartmentally, and institutionally. Finally, some major challenges to improving safety in pediatric radiology, and healthcare in general, are presented along with strategies to overcome these challenges. Our safety program is a work in progress; this article is a personal account and the reader is asked for tolerance of its occasional subjective tone and contents.
Sze
Raymond W
RW
Diagnostic Imaging and Radiology, Children's National Medical Center, NW, Washington, DC 20010-2970, USA. rsze@cnmc.org
D004219:District of Columbia; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000458:organization & administration; D010372:Pediatrics / Q000592:standards*; D016730:Program Development; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011871:Radiology / Q000592:standards*; D017751:Safety Management / Q000592:standards*