Patient Safety & Social Media: This dog can hunt!

Fabio Gratton, over at Ignite Health, did a fantastic thing by aggregating the tweet feeds of the top 25 Patient Safety tweeps I identified in last week's inaugural listing. You can access real-time information from people who have something to say about patient safety 24/7 by clicking here: The Patient Safety 25.

Patient safety is a discipline that sounds more like a warm puppy than a scientific approach for solving a serious public health problem. So harnessing the power of social media to make high-end patient safety endeavors more visible is a welcome step for those of us who walk the big dog.

Here are FAQs about the Top 25:

Who are these tweeps? And why are they here?

Patient safety tweeps come from 4 categories:

1. the experience of patients and families

2. the people and processes that touch them (clinicians, care settings, work flow design)

3. organizations where care is delivered (how resources are allocated, leadership exemplars, what's valued & rewarded)

4. other stakeholders (regulators; accreditors; payors; patient safety organizations; pharmaceutical & device manufacturers; researchers)
   

What makes for a high-end patient safety tweet?

It shares something about or leads people to: effective strategies and resources that reduce error and help shape performance of systems and the people who use them (to receive or deliver care). Errors & near-misses, examples of open disclosure, improvement strategies, outcome measures, technology solutions, and "a day in the life of" accounts written by patients or clinicians frequently yield high-end patient safety information.

People who are effective patient safety advocates borrow from cognitive psychology, systems engineering, and human factors, and they recognize the inherent fallibility of humans. (Endeavors that "blame, shame, and re-train" don't usually make the cut, but they're worth knowing about and tracking since they also shape culture and performance.)

How often is the list updated?

Monthly, around the 15th. The Twitterverse is new, and there are tons of high-end patient safety endeavors beginning to migrate there. I'll be on the lookout for new ones and will include them as their tweeps begin to make an impact.

How can I make a patient-safety tweet more visible?

Use the hashtag: #ptsafety. This makes it more likely that a patient safety-sensitive tweet will be picked up, evaluated, and passed along.