New Guide Facilitates Partnerships between Hospitals, Public Libraries to Inform Consumers About Patient Safety
A new tool is now available to help organizations develop and provide consumer awareness programming for patient safety. Partnering for Patient Empowerment Through Community Awareness (PPECA), a hospital-library collaborative program, is releasing new content this week. The PPECA Facilitator’s Guide and module presentations are now freely available for organizations to use in their own patient safety educational efforts.
CHICAGO (PRWEB) March 8, 2006 -- National Patient Safety Awareness Week is about promoting the importance of partnership with patients to reduce medical error.
To support other national efforts, Partnering for Patient Empowerment Through Community Awareness (PPECA), a hospital-library collaborative program, is releasing new content this week. The PPECA Facilitator’s Guide and module presentations are now freely available. The modules and guide will provide direction on presenting a patient safety program that hospitals and libraries can host together to increase awareness among consumers about patient safety.
"We felt it was important to participate in a program that shared information on how patients could become proactive partners in their own safe care," stated Carolyn Anthony, Director of Skokie Public Library, one of the PPECA library participants. Roxanne Goeltz, co-founder of Consumers Advancing Patient Safety (CAPS) and consumer speaker on patient safety agreed: “Patients must prepare themselves to be more involved in their healthcare. The atmosphere and resources available at the public libraries partnered with the knowledge and dedication of the hospitals will strengthen the safety net for all patients.”
To develop the PPECA model, five northern Illinois hospitals and public libraries worked together to refine content and the program development process. The free Facilitator’s Guide shares that expertise so others can initiate similar adult education sessions that feature health care practitioners, librarians and consumers as speakers. Program planners who need additional content for their sessions can access streaming video of the presentations from the project Web site at http://www.galter.northwestern.edu/PPECA/index.htm.
PPECA is the first model for building patient safety awareness through participatory community partnerships involving a public library and a healthcare institution. “Public libraries have a history of providing educational programs on topics of interest to their communities,” says Linda Walton, associate director, Galter Health Sciences Library and PPECA principal investigator. “Many people feel more comfortable in a public library environment than in a hospital setting for learning.”
The educational sessions include three short presentations designed to raise consumer awareness of:
• The consumer’s role in working with healthcare providers to manage
risk of avoidable patient injury;
• Patient-centered clinical and systems-based approaches to patient
safety; and
• Effective medical information gathering to support safe care.
PPECA was developed in collaboration with Consumers Advancing Patient Safety, the Health Learning Center of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Zipperer Project Management and the Metropolitan Library System. The program has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, under Contract. No. NO1-LM-1-3513.
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Press Contact: Lorri Zipperer
Company Name: ZIPPERER PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Email: email protected from spam bots
Phone: 847-328-5075
Website: http://www.galter.northwestern.edu/PPECA/index.htm
More Information: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/3/prweb355102.htm
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