By Tim Bredrup
In celebration of Patient Safety Awareness Week, March 4-10, a unique patient safety education program will be released by The Joint Commission. It will provide patients and their families with instant access to current patient safety videos at their bedside and while receiving care. The 2012 SAFE CARE Patient Safety Education Program is a free offering developed to assist health care organizations in educating patients to help prevent medical errors.
The campaign features videos from The Joint Commission’s Speak Up™ campaign, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Kimberly-Clark, the Patient Channel from The Wellness Network, and the Safe Care Campaign. The goal of the SAFE CARE Patient Safety Education Program is to save lives, prevent harm and help patients receive safer care.
The SAFE CARE Program utilizes free posters that hospitals can hang in patient rooms which allows patients and families to instantly access and watch safety videos by topic on their own smart phones by simply pointing a smart phone at a QR code on the poster, or texting the word “SAFE” to 411247 to receive a link to Safe Care’s safety video library. The nine short videos address the most common patient safety issues in hospitals such as hand hygiene, preventing infections, avoiding medication errors, patient falls, and more. Organizations are also able to customize the videos for a nominal fee.
