PPAHS

Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety is a national advocacy force for addressing patient health and safety priorities that are shared by patients, physicians, regulators, and industry. PPAHS facilitates patient-to-clinician dialogue by improving patient adherence, removing barriers, material translation, and promoting access. By doing so, we seek to ensure that the best practices, communication skills, medications, medical inventions, and technology that can improve care and reduce costs are employed.

“There is uniform agreement that alarm fatigue is a major problem. Alarm systems are built into many medical devices, such as infusion pumps and ventilators. When they work as intended, they alert caregivers that a decision or action is required for the patient’s health and safety. However, too many alarms, including false alarms, can fatigue, confuse, and overload clinicians.”

Dr. Paul M. Schyve, Senior Advisor, Healthcare Improvement, The Joint Commission

“In practice, checklists serve as a mental reminder of critical steps that we may or may not remember. Therefore, the value of a checklist with regards to PCAs would be to remind us/double check a critical step in the process.”

Dr. Julius Cuong Pham, Department of Emergency Medicine, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine, Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine