Denise Murphy, vice president for patient safety and quality at Main Line Health, a nonprofit health system serving portions of Philadelphia and its western suburbs, writes in Hospitals & Health Networks how her system integrates clinical and “people” bundles to slash sepsis deaths.
“By integrating clinical sepsis bundles — a grouping of evidence-based measures proven to ensure best outcomes — with reliably safe behaviors (collectively, our ‘people’ bundle), we were able to reduce the number of deaths from severe sepsis by more than 50 percent at four acute care hospitals.”
“With these factors in mind, we organized culture change work into three strategies: (1) set clear expectations; (2) provide education, training and tools needed to meet expectations; and (3) build and sustain accountability.”
“We adopted leader methods for reliability and specific error-prevention tools (behaviors) assisted by partners from the healthcare, military and nuclear industry who knew how to build reliability. The most influential leader action was making safety the core value, not to be overshadowed by other important competing priorities. From board meetings to unit or departmental daily huddles, Main Line employees and stakeholders discussed patient safety stories and great catches.”
