As March is patient safety month we wanted to share a few ways we work to ensure patient safety in our practice!
Although we are just a little internal medicine office and not a huge hospital, there are still plenty of steps we take to try and keep our patients safe.

1) Employee Training: All of our employees receive various trainings on an annual basis. We provide our staff with training on HIPAA so that they become highly familiar with how to treat private health information. We also host a CPR training for our staff so that we always have employees who are able to provide emergency care. On an as needed basis, our MAs also receive refresher courses on best practice for venipuncture and any other procedures.

2) Processes: As a medical practice we have a few processes in place to ensure patient safety. All of our MA stations have label machines connected to our EMRs that allow our medical assistants to print legible labels for any laboratory samples collected at our practice. This is the best way to reduce any possibility of mislabeled specimens and potentially giving patients incorrect lab results. We also have specific sterilization processes for our different instruments – weather they need to be packaged or cleaned at a different temperature – these processes ensure that instruments we use in the office are not a source of infection for our patients.

3) Equipment: You may have noticed that we have gloves available in all of our exam rooms – gloves are an important barrier to keep our patients safe as well as keep our staff safe! We also have hand sanitizer available all over the building which is our go-to, especially during flu season!

4) Building Safety: There are a few safety measures we have taken to make our facility safer for patients also. Our entryway steps now have treads which makes them much easier to walk on in wet weather; the same goes for our carpeted staircase. During snowstorms, our staff regularly shovels and salts the sidewalk in front of our building and we try to mop our waiting room regularly also to get up any water that had been trekked in so that there are no slips in our waiting room.

Although a lot of these items may seem obvious, they all go a long way in ensuring the safety and well-being of our patients. We review these processes regularly and consider employee and patient input to find any problems or improvements that can be made. Please know that we are always doing our best not only to treat you but also to keep you safe physically and psychologically whenever you visit our practice. Thank you for being our patient and have a safe and happy March!