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Answer the questions foremost on patients' minds
A growing number of organizations are disclosing errors to patients, but this can be disastrous if handled poorly.
"We need to train physicians and other health care professionals how to do this well," says Gregg Meyer , MD, Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital's senior vice president for quality and safety. "This is a growing trend, but we need to prepare our workforce, just like we would for any critically important procedure or intervention."
At Massachusetts General, situation management training prepares senior clinical and administrative staff to serve as disclosure "coaches." Disclosure is built into the patient care assessment process. "We are seeing this happen much more routinely," says Meyer. "This is a good development for patients and providers."
At Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, a policy requires the attending physician to disclose unanticipated outcomes, says Cathie Furman , senior vice president of quality and compliance. "We do not differentiate between errors and unanticipated outcomes," she says.
The policy was developed after a provider tried to disclose an error, but did not have the skills and handled it less than optimally, says Furman.
Physicians are given a two-and-a-half-hour workshop on communication of unanticipated outcomes, given by a trained consultant. "We have a specific role titled a 'situation facilitator' who has received additional training and coaching by the same consultant," says Furman.
The situation facilitators come from multiple disciplines and include nursing leaders and quality professionals. "Their role is to provide coaching to an attending physician...