CDC's Safe Healthcare Blog Addresses What to Tell Patients When Things Go Wrong

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a new toolkit to assist health departments and healthcare facilities with notifying patients after an infection control lapse or potential disease transmission during medical care. The toolkit includes the key steps a healthcare facility or public health department should take to initiate a patient notification. It also provides resources to assist with creating notification documents, planning media and communication strategies, developing communication resources, and releasing notification letters.

Today, on CDCs Safe Healthcare blog, Abbigail Tumpey, associate director for communication science for healthcare safety issues at CDC, discusses the overwhelming mix of emotions that patients can feel when they are notified of an unsafe medical practice or error.  CDCs toolkit aims to alleviate as much patient discomfort as possible by promoting best practices in communicating medical errors and unsafe practices.

Join the conversation on CDCs Safe Healthcare blog at: http://blogs.cdc.gov/safehealthcare.