The Empowered Patient Coalition won the first Excellence in Consumer Advocacy Award given by Consumer’s Union.

See the story in Consumer’s Reports:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/december/viewpoint/overview/index.htm

Hospitals may be even more dangerous than previously suspected. One out of every three people admitted suffers a medication mix-up, a fall, a bed sore, or another problem related to the way care is delivered, according to research published in April in the health policy journal Health Affairs. In this chat, we ask two leading advocates what people can do to avoid problems and stay safe in the hospital.

Read the archived transcript of the chat here.  Chicago Tribune reporter Judy Graham, and panelists Dr. Julia Hallisy and Lisa McGiffert chat about hospital safety issues.

The Empowered Patient Coalition is partnering with Transparent Learning to promote “The Faces of Medical Error…From Tears to Transparency” video series.  “The Story of Lewis Blackman,” the first in the series and an award-winning film produced by Transparent Health®, chronicles the experience of a vibrant, healthy 15-year-old boy who entered the hospital for what was believed to be a low-risk medical procedure. Through the thought-provoking insights of leading voices in patient safety education — including Lucian Leape, MD; Tim McDonald, MD, JD; Bob Galbraith ,MD; David Mayer, MD; Rosemary Gibson, and Lewis’s mom, Empowered Patient Coalition co-founder Helen Haskell — viewers are taken through all aspects of Lewis’ care. This is a full learning program complete with educational materials.

View video clips and order the DVDs by visiting Transparent Learning.  Transparent Learning will make a donation to the Empowered Patient Coalition for every video that is purchased through the Empowered Patient Coalition website or using the coupon code MAME-LB.  Please enter the coupon code MAME-LB at checkout when you purchase the video.

Transparent Learning, Inc. is also proud to offer the groundbreaking film “The Story of Lewis Blackman” in a unique pay-per-view (PPV) experience. The PPV version shows the entire film as seen on the DVD.  Based on the needs of the audience, the PPV option can be extremely practical and cost-effective. It lets hospitals and other healthcare providers:

• Offer viewings to some or all members of their team on demand, anywhere and at any time;
• Watch it immediately after placing the order, with no waiting for a DVD to be shipped;
• Instantly access the video in locations without a DVD player;
• Control the video easily with play, pause, stop, fast forward and rewind functions; and
• Stop the video and pick it up again at any time, up to one year later.

Click here to order the Pay-Per-View film. Please enter the coupon code MAME-LB at checkout.

Thank you for your interest in The Story of Lewis Blackman and The Story of Michael Skolnik.

Please watch a video about Diana Brookins, capturing a true story through a play about a mother’s crusade, Kim Sandstrom as she moves forward and fights back about the untimely death of her daughter after surgery. The play, titled Damselfly, premiered at “The Next Decade: National Patient Safety Progress Expo” in Ocala, Florida and was supported by the Empowered Patient Coalition, Mother’s Against Medical Error, Rasmussen College, Munroe Regional Medical Center and the Ocala/Marion County Visitor’s Bureau.

http://www.ocala.com/article/20100312/VIDEO/3122000

Last Thanksgiving weekend, many of us bloggers participated in the first documented “blog rally” to promote Engage With Grace – a movement aimed at having all of us understand and communicate our end-of-life wishes. It was a great success, with over 100 bloggers in the healthcare space and beyond participating and spreading the word. Plus, it was timed to coincide with a weekend when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these tough conversations – our closest friends and family. Our original mission – to get more and more people talking about their end of life wishes – hasn’t changed. But it’s been quite a year – so we thought this holiday, we’d try something different.

A bit of levity.

At the heart of Engage With Grace are five questions designed to get the conversation started. We’ve included them at the end of this post. They’re not easy questions, but they are important. To help ease us into these tough questions, and in the spirit of the season, we thought we’d start with five parallel questions that ARE pretty easy to answer:

Silly? Maybe. But it underscores how having a template like this – just five questions in plain, simple language – can deflate some of the complexity, formality and even misnomers that have sometimes surrounded the end-of-life discussion. So with that, we’ve included the five questions from Engage With Grace below. Think about them, document them, share them.

Over the past year there’s been a lot of discussion around end of life. And we’ve been fortunate to hear a lot of the more uplifting stories, as folks have used these five questions to initiate the conversation.

One man shared how surprised he was to learn that his wife’s preferences were not what he expected. Befitting this holiday, The One Slide now stands sentry on their fridge.

Wishing you and yours a holiday that’s fulfilling in all the right ways.

(To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team. )