Resource of the Week
by Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor
According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies, the number of deaths from medical errors in U.S. hospitals is estimated to be anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000 per year. The cost of medication errors alone in the U.S. are estimated at somewhere around $2 billion per year. These are not insignificant numbers. This week, we'll take a look at a new website from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that intends to function as "a national 'one-stop' portal of resources for improving patient safety and preventing medical errors."
Patient Safety
Source: Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) AHRQ Patient Safety Network (PSNet)
"AHRQ Patient Safety Network (PSNet) is a new national web-based resource featuring the latest news and essential resources on patient safety. The site offers weekly updates of patient safety literature, news, tools, and meetings ('What's New'), and a vast set of carefully annotated links to important research and other information on patient safety ('The Collection'). Supported by a robust patient safety taxonomy and web architecture, AHRQ PSNet provides powerful searching and browsing capability, as well as the ability for diverse users to customize the site around their interests (My PSNet). It also is tightly coupled with AHRQ WebM&M, the popular monthly journal that features user-submitted cases of medical errors, expert commentaries, and perspectives on patient safety."
This site is chock full of interesting features and information. The "What's New" section on the left side of the home page offers links to journal, newspaper, and magazine articles; books and reports; audio-visual resources, and more. On the right side of the page, you can "Browse the Collection" in one of two ways -- by resource type or by general subject area: Safety Target, Approaches to Improving Safety, Error Types, Clinical Error, Target Audience, Setting of Care. The entire site is seachable via a text box in the top center of the home page, or you can use the sophisticated advanced search form to restrict your query to various combinations of resource types, topics, etc., via dropdown menus. As you browse through the site, each page offers a search box that limits the results to information in that particular area.
Be sure to scroll down and click on the two resources on the bottom right-hand side:
+ Patient Safety Classics: "The most influential, frequently cited articles, books, and resources, in patient safety," -- keyword searchable.
+ Did You Know? -- Graphs illustrating particularly relevant statistics. You can browse the entire collection of these on a separate page.
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