In her December interview, “How Safety Protocols Prevent Drug Mistakes,” Linda Costa, PhD, RN, explains how hospitals have gotten much better at protecting patients from medical mistakes. The dialogue was part of the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative series commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the IOM report, To Err is Human, which highlights the chilling story of Ben Kolb, an 8-year-old Florida boy who died in 1995 after he was injected with the wrong drug during a routine surgical procedure. Listen to the interview online at http://inqri.blogspot.com.
After completing a Robert Wood Johnson health policy fellowship—where she served as a senior health policy advisor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—Deborah E. Trautman, PhD, RN, returns to Johns Hopkins where she will lead the new Center for Health Policy. Before her fellowship, Deb was director of nursing for emergency medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and most recently served as interim vice president of patient care services at Howard County General Hospital.