Audio
Each month, the IHI Open School’s On Call audio conference series puts you in touch with world-renowned experts in patient safety and quality improvement. Each hour-long call is moderated by a student, ends with a question-and-answer period, and focuses on an issue that affects you — whether it’s dealing with a colleague who’s about to make a mistake or deciphering trends in national health policy.
View the Calendar tab for registration information.
Check out our archive of past calls below. You can download them as free podcasts and listen on the go, using your iPod or any other mp3 player. Here’s how:
Featured On Call Audio Conference
June 16, 2008: On Call with Donald Berwick, MD, MPP
What Is It Like to Be Trapped in an Error?
“I then realized that I had infused almost the entire bag of heparin … I thought that I was probably going to throw up.”
Even the most competent people make mistakes. That’s human nature. But many hospitals don’t design their systems to account for human error, treating mistakes — and the people who commit them — as if they’re individual failures.
In the first conference call sponsored by the IHI Open School for Health Professions, IHI CEO Don Berwick and nursing student Meghan McCann confess awful mistakes they made early in their careers. A system that recognizes humans are fallible, they say, is a system that can prevent tragic errors.
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February 24, 2009: Sorrel King, Founder, Josie King Foundation - Sorrel King, after her 18-month-old daughter Josie was killed by medical errors at Johns Hopkins Hospital, turned grief into action, launching a foundation and working with Johns Hopkins and many other hospitals to improve patient safety.
June 24, 2009: Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, president and CEO, IHI - Would you do a better job if your pay were linked to patient outcomes? Don Berwick explores pay for performance.
September 15, 2008: Stuart Altman, PhD, Professor of National Health Policy, Brandeis University - With a public beset by health care woes — the number of uninsured Americans is rising, primary care doctors are few and far between — a change is coming in US health care policy. But what will that change look like within the next five years? And what will it mean for you as you embark on a career in health care?
April 27, 2009: David B. Nash, MD, MBA, Founding Dean, Jefferson School of Population Health, Thomas Jefferson University - Interested in having quality improvement and patient safety in the curriculum at your school? Wish you knew how you could help make it happen? Listen in.
November 3, 2008: Peter Pronovost, MD, researcher and physician - Peter Pronovost helped Michigan hospitals adopt checklists — simple lists of all the steps involved in routine tasks. Within 18 months, the intervention saved an estimated 1,500 lives.
August 6, 2008: Carol Haraden, PhD, Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement - Have you ever been spared a dead car battery by a beeping noise that reminded you to turn your car lights off? A nurse administers a wrong dose because medication labels look similar. A doctor is interrupted by a page and then gives the nurse incomplete patient orders...
January 27, 2009: Patrick Lee, MD, Volunteer Clinical Mentor, Partners In Health, Hospitalist Physician, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Clinical Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School - Interested in improving the quality of care in a developing country but not sure how to get started? Curious about how effective, lasting improvements are made in rural, resource-poor settings? Then listen to this call and hear the story of how Dr. Patrick Lee and his teammates helped make dramatic improvements at a hospital in Kirehe, Rwanda.
March 9, 2009: James L. Reinertsen, MD, The Reinertsen Group - Sure, you want to improve the quality of health care. But you’re just a student – who’s going to listen to you?
May 15, 2009: Parker Palmer, sociologist, Paul Batalden, Dartmouth Medical School professor, David Leach, former CEO of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education - When you spot a patient who’s not getting the best possible care, what do you do? How do you speak up? Join the discussion.
June 16, 2008: Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCPPresident and CEO, Institute for Healthcare Improvement - “I then realized that I had infused almost the entire bag of heparin … I thought that I was probably going to throw up.”
Lucian Leape, MD, Adjunct Professor of Health Policy, Harvard School of Public Health - Millions of people suffer every year from mistakes in health care. Lucian Leape, MD, explains why those mistakes happen — and how to prevent them.
