Quality Update

Lori Paine’s career trajectory has taken her from bedside nurse to the very face of patient safety at Hopkins Hospital. As the institution’s first patient safety coordinator, she embodies the mantra of doing no harm. “Every single one of us would be lying to ourselves if we denied that we had ever made mistakes,” she says. “And all of us are either patients or family of patients. Safety is something we simply cannot ignore.”

Nationwide, other hospitals are instituting similar posts, as a new “science of safety” in health care emerges. This new path comes in response to pressures from patient advocacy groups, accrediting organizations and now, internally, from medical staff, as they embrace the concept that it’s everyone’s responsibility to protect patients.

Paine stepped into the new post a year ago and began by leading the Patient Safety Committee, the group that sets and monitors the hospital’s safety agenda, through an eight-week planning process. The exercise resulted in the safety strategy—anchored by eight goals, such as improving communication and teamwork, engaging patients and family members in planning treatment, and developing valid measures of patient safety—that she is now coordinating. 

To key people in to the new strategy, for example, Paine has organized a series of quarterly grand-rounds presentations on safety for the entire hospital staff. To engage patients and families, she works with units to make sure patients receive daily care plans and daily goals sheets. To improve the “culture of safety,” she coordinates rounds made by senior executives. These rounds are part of  the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program, or CUSP, an eight-step exercise now in place in at least 10 different units that begins and ends with staff assessments of safety.

Paine also was the first person hired as a quality improvement coach by the Hopkins Center for Innovation in Quality Patient Care, overseeing an initiative to increase nurses’ “touch time” with patients.