By Michael W. Wong, JD (Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety)
14 years ago, I made a promise to Cindy Abbiehl, a mother who had lost her daughter to opioid-induced respiratory depression.
How and why I started the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS) are discussed in this recent podcast with Chris Rokosh, RN, PNC(C). Chris has created a wonderful and informative series of podcasts “Inside Medical Malpractice”.
In “Inside Medical Malpractice”, Chris (President, CEO, and Founder of Connect Experts) explores the often misunderstood but fascinating world of medical malpractice with a variety of guests, from experienced lawyers to patients, and medical experts in the most sophisticated and complex areas of healthcare.
Here are some highlights from my discussion:
From Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker
I spoke about the perception that many people have when they first meet me:
“I’m not a doctor, nurse, or respiratory therapist. I’m an attorney. I used to do issues and crisis management for large pharmaceuticals so for many years I represented the bad guys, as the cocktail crowd would say. 13 years ago, some would say I saw the light and I went from being Darth Vader to Skywalker, and started this nonprofit, the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety.”
Advantages of Not Being a Clinician
As the Executive Director of a patient safety nonprofit, I have sometimes thought that having clinical training would be beneficical in this role. In the podcast, I talk about the advantages of not having a clinical education:
“If I had been a physician or nurse, I probably wouldn’t have brought together all these committees that included celebrity physicians like Peter Pronovost, because I would have felt that I could have done it all by myself … Now, if I have ans idea, I’ll turn to ne of the physicians, nurses or respiratory therapists on our board and say “hey what do you think about this?” and and they’ll tell me whether I’m crazy or not”
Don’t Complain, Do Something
Complaining about a problem is very easy – doing something about it is hard. In the podcast, I discuss this attitude which is a hallmark of the way the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety operates:
“One thing I’ve always felt and told people is that we need to not just complain about an issue. I mean it’s so easy to gripe about something. It’s harder to come up with some kind of solution.”
Moving the Patient Safety Needle
This attitude of providing solutions is how the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety is able to move the patient safety needle:
Moving the patient safety needle is “a combination of technology and medications with human smarts. You can’t replace the eyes of a nurse or physician that is looking at a patient and saying to themselves “something isn’t right” and and that’s something we can never replace with a machine or AI. I don’t think that we can ever replace the human factor from the equation.”
To listen to the podcast, please click here.