VCU Medical Center announces Patient Safety Award winners

By Joe Kuttenkuler

Three staff members at the VCU Medical Center were honored recently with the 2003 Patient Safety Award during the VCU Health System board meeting. This year's winners were Patrick Coyne, Kathy Moran and Pat Buster - all nurses in VCU's Massey Cancer Center.

The three nurses recognized and managed a potentially serious problem involving a piece of equipment that was being used to treat a patient. The nurses followed up by contacting the equipment manufacturer to address the problem in order to avoid a future occurrence.

"Preventing harm during the process of healthcare is something we take very seriously," said Jill Mercier, RN, patient safety officer at VCU. "From a patient and staff perspective, it is imperative that we all become better educated about the safety of our patients."

Mercier recently attended a national patient safety conference in Washington D.C. that attracted over 1,000 physicians, pharmacists, lawyers, nurses and risk mangers from as far away as England and Australia.

Patient safety has become a major initiative across the country for all medical centers. Recently, Anthem initiated a program that will reward hospitals that achieve certain patient safety benchmarks.

The Patient Safety Award is given to recognize employees for their efforts in creating and maintaining a safe environment for patients at the medical center. Criteria for receiving the award include identifying a serious patient safety error, taking appropriate action to intercede on the patient's behalf and alerting others to the error to minimize or eliminate future occurrences.