At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, patient safety is paramount. We work every day to deliver effective and efficient care while protecting our patients from harm.
For example, Brigham and Women’s Hospital is committed to honoring the five “rights” of safe medication administration: the right patient, right drug, right dose, right time, and right route of administration (such as with a pill, injection, or IV). This commitment, combined with our leadership in developing and adopting new prescribing and medication administration technologies, has led to significant decreases in medication errors.
Another example can be found in our work surrounding healthcare-associated infections. These sometimes occur because of the vulnerability created by patients’ medical conditions and because the best medical care often requires the use of devices, treatments, or procedures that can save lives but also increase the risk of infection. Fortunately, some of these infections can be prevented by ensuring that certain best practices are followed.
In this portion of our website, we provide measures of our performance in seven major areas related to patient safety:
