Featured Speaker Peter Pronovost Presents 'From Healing in the Hospital to Healthy at Home'

Peter Pronovost starts his speech by analyzing the impact that stories have on our behaviors, especially with regards to social movements. Patient Safety is a social movement and is targeted at changing behavior of all involved in healthcare. Referencing Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement, Peter proved that a conscious decision to make a choice can spark a ripple effect of the same behaviors. Peter Pronovost of University Hospitals reflects on his first interaction with a family member who had been impacted by an error in the hospital. Josie King died of an undetected sepsis infection and her story inspired Peter to not only minimize preventable deaths, but to eliminate them. He argues that hospitals that are committed to zero had four common characteristics: 1) Their leaders firmly declared a commitment to ZERO 2) They created an enabling infrastructure with project management, training and checklists 3) They connected clinicians with peer learning communities 4) They were transparent with all results, good and bad, in order to promote accountability and analysis for eliminating the same error. He shames the idea of infections being inevitable in the hospital. This is the story we have been believing and perpetuating for the entire existence of healthcare. Peter urges us to change the narrative by 'believing and belonging'. Believing in zero, he argues, is very similar to Roger Bannister's record for the first four minute mile after it was believed that it had been impossible. Just one year after Bannister's record, a dozen more people broke the four minute mile record. The second component of changing the narrative includes belonging, which he uses the example of evolution. In the early 1900s, red robins and blue boobies were prevalent due to their ability to peck into milk containers and extract the product. When the manufacturers changed the containers, both birds learned again how to open the new container. However, today, blue boobies are thriving while red robins are extinct because the blue boobies are communal birds and shared their newfound information while the red robins isolated themselves into oblivion. His purpose in referencing those birds with regards to changing the narrative was to emphasize how important it is for everyone in the healthcare field to remove themselves from their 'specialty' or their 'department' and recognize the big picture and recognize how all of the amazing efforts are only able to come to fruition and be successful with communication and integration. On the safety scale within hospitals, janitors are on the same level as the CEOs because both have the main goal of safety for the patients. In other words, the common idea that janitors are completely disconnected from CEOs who are completely disconnected from call centers is a flaw in our system because it perpetuates the idea of "That's not my responsibility" when, in fact, safety comes down to each and every single component of the healthcare team working together as a system and as a team. Later, he discusses the future outlook for healthcare and emphasizes the idea of the wasted finances in the healthcare system. What is value in the delivery of healthcare? The financial incentives are misaligned with the healthcare outcomes. The economics of hospital financing might yield cuts in patient safety budgets which is why we, as a whole, should be changing our behavior and our narratives now.