Every year at least 98,000 Americans die - and countless more are injured - as a result of medical errors. This program begins by profiling the efforts of Sorrel King, whose 18-month-old daughter Josie was killed at one of the most respected hospitals in the world, Johns Hopkins. King has gone from grieving victim to engaged activist, partnering with Johns Hopkins to make safety a top priority at the institution. Now she has joined forces with Dr. Donald Berwick, a nationally recognized patient safety advocate, to save 100,000 lives in American hospitals.
98,000 people die each year from medical errors. 100,000 more die from infections they get in hospitals. First Do No Harm focuses on efforts to stop medication errors and hospital-acquired infections.
Chronic diseases like diabetes and congestive heart failure affect nearly 100 million Americans, and treatment of these illnesses consumes nearly 70 percent of all health care resources. Yet doctors are often unable to prevent needless suffering or even death, and these failures are threatening the viability of our entire health care system. This program looks at groundbreaking efforts in two very different communities -- Los Angeles, Calif. and Whatcom County in the state of Washington -- that are fundamentally transforming the physician-patient relationship ... and ...
As medicine continues to become more and more technologically sophisticated and the systems that deliver medical care become more complex, the relationship between providers, patients and families is more important than ever. This final program tells the story of patients and families who have formed a unique bond in a teaching hospital in the small town of Augusta, Georgia to transform the institution into a nationally recognized facility where partnership is a guiding vision to the care it delivers.