6th Annual Quality and Safety Symposium, 11/15/18 DECEMBER 5, 2018 BY INTERNAL MEDICINE AT IOWA “Facts provide us with knowledge. Stories provide us with wisdom.” Sorrel King, mother of Josie and founder of the Josie King Foundation, shared her story with the attendees of the 6th Annual Quality and Safety Symposium. The presentation began with the gripping story of the medical error that resulted in the death of her young child, Josie. But over...

On the heels of National Family Caregivers Month in November, which this year carried the theme of “Supercharge Your Caregiving,” here is a way to carry out that charge year-round. And carry it out we must, because health care can no longer ignore these folks. The Caregiver Action Network estimates that there are over 90 million Americans doing this critical work, which is largely publicly invisible, unpaid, and underappreciated. The Josie King...

The Josie King Foundation believes that nurses are leading the charge for a safer, more compassionate health care system. But they realize that in addition to the joys of healing, nurses face many emotional upheavals related to patient suffering, a complex workplace, new technologies, and fear of clinical errors. When personal pressures from everyday living are added to the already heavy load, the weight can lead to nurse stress, anxiety,...

By Hayley Phelan Oct. 25, 2018 It was my ex-husband who got me journaling again. Our marriage was falling apart, and, on the advice of his friend, he had started to do “morning pages,” a daily journaling practice from the seminal self-help book “The Artist’s Way.” Though I had kept a diary throughout my teen years and early 20s, somewhere along the way I’d fallen out of the habit. At 29, though, I was deeply unhappy and looking for answers...

By Tim Cunningham He collapsed at school by his locker, just 11 years old. After 9-1-1 was called, the EMTs arrived and began CPR immediately. He was brought to our emergency department and we did everything we could — IVs, ventilation, sympathomimetic drips — but nothing worked. We couldn’t save him. The attending physician declared him dead — calling the code and noting time of death — as we, without a moment’s hesitation, stepped back into...