News Archive Featured in the Media JeffNEWS Jefferson Medical College

DATE: January 5, 2004

TIME: 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

PLACE: Hotel Sofitel, 17th and Sansom streets, Philadelphia

EVENT: Jefferson Medical College, as part of the health care community’s effort to improve patient safety, is offering an intensive one-day course for third-year medical students-- the only Philadelphia medical school in Philadelphia offering this focused material in this format.

“Improving Patient Safety by Reducing Medical Error” is sponsored by Jefferson’s Department of Health Policy. During the day-long session, a group of nationally-recognized health-care professionals will address these issues with third-year medical students, who are seeing patients for the first time as part of their medical education. The speakers come from a number of distinguished institutions, in addition to Jefferson, including the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

The one-day interclerkship course, offered during the semester break, bringing together the entire third-year class, is a format that a number of medical schools in the United States have adopted to expand the curriculum to add important new material, said David B. Nash, M.D., MBA, chair of Health Policy, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University.

BACKGROUND: Patient safety issues have received considerable media attention in recent years. Approximately 98,000 patients die as the result of medical errors in hospitals each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Preventable medical errors affect as many as one of every 25 patients and cost billions of dollars annually.

“Medical errors can range from causing hospital-related infections through improper hygiene/sterilization techniques, dispensing the wrong medication to a patient and misreading the results of a medical test,” noted Dr. Nash.

In addition, health policy expert Dr. Nash was named as the first chair of this new department. Dr. Nash, a board certified internist, is the founding director of the Office of Health Policy and Clinical Outcomes, and the Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor of Health Policy. In 1996, he was named the first associate dean for Health Policy at Jefferson Medical College.

The Health Policy office was established at Jefferson in 1990 to develop long-term strategies to prepare health-care providers for the challenges of a dynamic health-care environment. The department serves as a key contributor to the education and research programs of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Jefferson Medical College.

The Health Policy department also serves as a focal point for public health, health services and health policy research for Jefferson Medical College.