October is a month of many special events, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Health Literacy Month, Occupational Therapy Month, Canadian Library Month, plus many more weeks and days. It was hard to choose just one to focus on!
Canadian Patient Safety Week #AskListenTalk runs October 29 to November 2, 2018. This year’s focus is on medication safety, with the theme Not All Meds Get Along, prompting patients and healthcare professionals to seek medication reviews for at-risk populations.
A plethora of free resources are available, including a podcast series, documentaries and videos, communications toolkit, quizzes, and more.
The Manitoba Institute for Patient Safety features Manitoba-specific resources, with a focus on It’s Safe To Ask which encourages patients and healthcare providers to ask and discuss three key questions.
Are you unsure what all the phrases with # are for? This easy-to-use guide provides an overview of using Twitter in healthcare and outlines an 8-step guide to get you started and so you can follow Canadian Patient Safety Week activities #AskListenTalk!
These five questions can help patients and caregivers start a conversation about medications to improve communications with their health care provider.
This BC Patient Safety and Quality Council initiative supports long-term care homes to reduce the number of their residents who are prescribed antipsychotic medications.
The Health Quality Council of Alberta created this toolkit to stop the use of abbreviations in healthcare. Abbreviations are unsafe because they are not universally understood, but their use is currently widespread in healthcare.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information analyzed its data on preventable harm that occurs in Canadian acute care hospitals. The Canadian Patient Safety Institute then created evidence-based interventions to reduce those harmful incidents.
Decisions around deprescribing can be very difficult. Researchers from the Bruyère Research Institute and the Ontario Pharmacy Research Collaboration developed evidence-based guidelines for deprescribing. Each guideline is summarized in an easy-to-use algorithm and information brochure. These algorithms can help health care professionals safely stop or reduce medications for specific drug classes.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities Big-City Mayors’ Caucus created comprehensive recommendations for coordinated, Canada-wide action by all levels of government. This includes action on all four pillars of Canada’s drug strategy: harm reduction, treatment, prevention and enforcement.
To finish on a fun and light note, as part of Canadian Patient Safety Week, the Canadian Patient Safety Institute is holding a contest to create the best caption for the Not All Meds Get Along image. The only rule is that it must be clean and family friendly. The deadline to enter is noon MT on November 2, 2018. Good luck!
