Culture change is critical

Many hospitals say they are using the checklist yet their rates of CLABSI remain high. When I ask whether a nurse in their hospital would stop a senior physician who violated one of the items on the checklist, the answer is nearly always "NO". This is why culture change is so critical to our work and why we are asking you to do CUSP. However, some of you have successfully changed culture so that nurses can and do ensure patients receive the checklist items even if a doctor forgets. Your colleagues in other hospitals and states would love to hear how you created a culture that allows nurses to question physicians or what you are struggeling with in trying to change culture. Please add your thoughts and comments in response to this post.

Thank you,

Peter

Engaging Physicians

We recognize that if this project is to be successful, we must engage physicians. We also recognize that this is often very difficult. To help with this, on our website, we provide training on engaging physicians.

What are you doing that seems to be effective in engaging physicians in this work?

Please share your successes and struggles.

Peter

Welcome Message From Dr. Peter Pronovost

Hi

On the CUSP Stop BSI is a groundbreaking national program to improve patient safety. It is our Polio campaign of the 21st century. With efforts, with more volunteers than any standing army in history, the word has virtually eliminated polio. We now need to do the same for central line associated blood stream infections.

Many of us have led large scale collaborative projects, but no one has ever done a data rich national project that offers hope of improving the culture of safety in hospitals and measurably improving infection rates. It will not be easy, no one has done this before; yet with 30,000 to 62,000 dying from these infections a year in the U.S, we have no choice, we have to succeed. It will require the leadership of all of you.

I am eager to learn with you, to reduce infections and improve culture, and to build capacity to tackle the next problem. Our team is excited about participating in this historic project and the potential this holds as a method for reducing infections, and improving the often toxic culture of medicine. I am curious, what excites YOU about participating in this project?

Warmly,

Peter