NPSF Awards $200,000 in Grant Funding for Patient Safety Research

BOSTON, May 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Patient Safety Foundation has awarded grants totaling $200,000 to support new research in patient safety. The grants will fund projects led by Elizabeth Cox, MD, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and by Gordon Schiff, MD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

(Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080307/AQF053LOGO)

Dr. Cox's project, Improving Hospital Safety for Children: Strategies to Engage Parents in Bedside Rounds, will seek to improve family involvement in pediatric patient care through a study of bedside rounds at a children's hospital. Using video tapes of bedside rounds conducted at their institution, the investigators will work with patients' family members and clinicians to identify factors that promote or inhibit family engagement and to develop potential strategies to eliminate barriers to engagement. The analytic approach will incorporate techniques from systems engineering and human factors theory to address the impact of work-system factors as facilitators of or barriers to family engagement. Dr. Cox is the recipient of the James S. Todd Memorial Research Grant, made possible by funding provided by the American Medical Association.

Dr. Schiff's study, Analysis of CPOE-Related Errors Reported to USP's MEDMARX Error Reporting System, will investigate errors associated with computerized prescriber order entry (CPOE) systems through an analysis of data from the US Pharmacopeia's MEDMARX error reporting system. The authors will analyze 53,367 medication errors flagged in the MEDMARX database as CPOE-related and will use the results of this analysis to develop a new taxonomy for CPOE-related errors and process failure modes. The investigators will test the vulnerability of leading CPOE systems to actual errors reported to MEDMARX by attempting to replicate these reported errors experimentally. Finally, the investigators will draw upon lessons learned to make recommendations for safer CPOE use and design at the local and national levels. Dr. Schiff is the recipient of the NPSF Board Grant, which is supported in part by generous contributions from NPSF Board members.

The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) Research Grants Program seeks to stimulate new, innovative projects directed toward enhancing patient safety in the United States. The Program's objective is to promote studies leading to the prevention of human errors, system errors, patient injuries, and the consequences of such adverse events in the healthcare setting. Since 1998, the Program has supported 34 research projects with a total of nearly $3.4 million in grant funding. Many of these grants have been awarded to interdisciplinary teams to support research on diverse topics in areas such as medication errors, organizational design, and disclosure or communication issues.

For more information regarding the National Patient Safety Foundation research program or the grant application process, please visit www.npsf.org or email [email protected].

The National Patient Safety Foundation has been diligently pursuing one mission since its founding in 1997 – to improve the safety of the healthcare system for the patients and families it serves. NPSF is unwavering in its determined and committed focus on uniting disciplines and organizations across the continuum of care, championing a collaborative, inclusive, multi-stakeholder approach.

NPSF is an independent not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization located at 268 Summer Street, 6th Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

SOURCE National Patient Safety Foundation