Georgia Tech's Health Systems Institute welcomes Dr. Mary Foley, associate director of the Center for Nursing Research and Innovation at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), on "Safe Healthcare Settings: Do Workers and Patients Equally Benefit from the Current Efforts?"

Lunch will be served at noon in the atrium outside the Executive Classroom.

Abstract:
For the last decade, healthcare settings have received national and international attention regarding the safety and quality of patient care. The 1999 Institute of Medicine report “To Err is Human” and subsequent Crossing the Quality Chasm series has kept healthcare safety at the top, or near the top, of healthcare leaders and health professionals agenda. At the same time, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health have declared that healthcare workers are considered at higher risk of occupational injury than agricultural and construction workers. Health care settings expose workers to chemical, mechanical, physical, and biological hazards. In a review of the current efforts to address the culture and/or climate of safety in healthcare, alignment and conflicts are both evident. This presentation will use the efforts to reduce healthcare worker exposure to bloodborne pathogens (from needlestick and other sharps injuries) as a template to evaluate the effectiveness of safety efforts for workers in the “patient safety” environment.