The NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) and CIR's Policy and Education Initiative (PEI) sponsored the one-day conference on November 30, 2011, bringing together 160 healthcare professionals from all 11 hospitals in the HHC system. The conference focused on a team and systems-based approach to reducing medication errors, with emphasis on the use of opioid and effective pain management. It was co-sponsored by 1199 SEIU and funded by the Federal Medication and Conciliation Service and the CIR Patient Care Trust Fund.
Helen Haskell, the founder and president of Mothers Against Medical Error and the director of The Empowered Patient Coalition, shared the story of her son, Lewis Blackman, at the conference "Improving Medication Safety Through Effective Communication and Teamwork."
Patient safety experts have long agreed that medication errors are the single most frequent source of preventable error. Additionally, creating a culture of patient safety requires strong teamwork and effective communication between healthcare providers, yet there is often not enough attention devoted to developing these skills. Click Here to view all 18 video clips from the Medication Safety Conference.
The foundation of the patient-physician relationship is the ability of the physician to communicate well with his or her patient. Diagnostic and therapeutic tools such as “motivational interviewing” to change problematic health behaviors and “patient-centered interviewing” are strongly associated with adherence to treatment, lower malpractice rates and improved clinical outcomes. The tools also improve patient and physician satisfaction, yet they are not routinely included in a resident’s training.
To help rectify this deficit, the CIR Policy and Education Initiative (CIR PEI) sponsored The Art of Medicine: A Physician-Patient Communication Conference on November 19, 2011 at the New York Academy of Medicine.
Dr. Jonathan Fader from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine presented "Motivational Interviewing," teaching residents how to help patients find reasons to make positive changes.
This video project was made possible by grants from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation and the CIR Joint Quality Improvement Association.
NYC Residents Learn the Art of Patient-Centered Interviewing
View clips from the conference and download educational materials listed at the end of this post..The foundation of the patient-physician relationship is the ability of the physician to communicate well with his or her patient. Diagnostic and therapeutic tools such as “motivational interviewing” to change problematic health behaviors and “patient-centered interviewing” are strongly associated with adherence to treatment, lower malpractice rates and improved clinical outcomes. The tools also improve patient and physician satisfaction, yet they are not routinely included in a resident’s training.
To help rectify this deficit, the CIR Policy and Education Initiative (CIR PEI) sponsored The Art of Medicine: A Physician-Patient Communication Conference on November 19, 2011 at the New York Academy of Medicine.
Drs. Auguste Fortin, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine and Sheira Schlair, Internal Medicine Associate Program Director at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, taught nearly 150 residents, medical students and faculty how to build efficiency and effectiveness through integrated patient- and doctor-centered interviewing. In just ten minutes, a physician can elicit the patient’s entire biopsychosocial story behind the visit, arrive at the diagnosis, and impress upon patients her care and compassion.
Dr. Robert Schiller, Chair of Graduate Medical Education at Beth Israel Medical Center’s Institute for Family Health, discusses the importance of patient-centered care.
“Allowing the patient to tell his/her symptom story is therapeutic,” said Auguste Fortin, MD, MPH. “They don’t necessarily want you to fix everything they tell you about, and they understand and appreciate agenda setting.”
Residents who attended the workshop reported that after being trained to structure their interviews according to this technique, they experienced vastly improved efficiency and control over the interview and greatly enhanced rapport with their patients.
Other experts at the one-day conference spoke on motivational interviewing, resident wellness and overcoming culture barriers.
Speakers included Drs. Jonathan Fader, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine; Robert Schiller, Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital; Ethan Fried, Internal Medicine Program Director at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center; Andrew Yacht, Internal Medicine Program Director at Maimonides Medical Center; Farida Khan, Attending Physician at New York Methodist Hospital; and CIR resident Girish Nadkarni from St. Luke’s-Roosevelt.
Thanks to a grant from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, the conference was videotaped and the CIR Policy and Education Initiative produced videos and accompanying educational modules for further study.
NEW! Dr. Sheira Schlair from Montefiore Medical Center in New York and Dr. Auguste H. Fortin VI from the Yale School of Medicine present "Evidence-Based Patient-Centered Communication Strategy."
By all accounts the U.S. health care delivery system is rapidly changing. Given that resident physicians comprise almost one-quarter of all physicians who work in hospitals today, it is imperative that their training nurture compassion and social responsibility as well as an emphasis on safe, quality and patient-centered medicine.
2011 Accomplishments
Striving for Patient Safety — Our collaboration with the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has featured pioneering conferences on effective patient information hand-overs, enhancing teamwork and communication and reducing hospital-acquired infections. In 2011-12, grant funding has enabled us to focus on reducing medication errors with a one-day HHC-wide conference. Educational materials produced from this event will be rolled out at subsequent multi-disciplinary grand rounds.
Mary E. Burkhart, MS, RPh, FASHP; Lt. Col. Jorge D. Carillo, PharmD, MS; and Helen Haskell, founder of Mothers Against Medical Error were the featured speakers of the 2011 HHC Conference "Improving Medication Safety Through Effective Communication and Teamwork."
Teamwork—it’s the buzzword in medicine these days, but how often do teams of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, techs and hospital administrators actually discuss a common medical problem?
That was the strength of the November 30 medication safety conference that brought together more than 160 healthcare professionals from all 11 hospitals in the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) system. The conference focused on a team and systems-based approach to reducing medication errors, with emphasis on the use of opioid and effective pain management. Keynote speakers from the U.S. Army, the Ann Arbor VA Medical Center, and the founder of Mothers Against Medical Error, and a panel of HHC colleagues imparted valuable lessons; participants later broke out by hospital to identify medication safety concerns in their daily work.
Effective patient-physician communication is associated with safer patient care, higher patient satisfaction and adherence to treatment, lower malpractice rates as well as higher physician satisfaction. Yet physicians have historically received little training in evidence-based methods of communication.
Recognizing this need, the CIR Policy and Education Initiative is organizing a one day conference for residents, medical students and faculty on the topic of evidence-based skills for effective communication.
Friday, June 29, 2012 at 01:01PM 
