Transparency as Healing: A Powerful TED Talk
March 06, 2013 at 4:05 PM
By: Melinda Van Niel
At MACRMI, it is our task to advocate for a transparent, honest, and empathetic approach to adverse events. Throughout the MACRMI website you will see the concept of transparency championed over and over again. You will notice as you browse that there are many resources on this website that elucidate the CARe model's merits, and the paramount importance of transparency in our medical system. But sometimes a picture (or in this case, a video) really is worth a thousand words.
In a recent TEDx Talk, Leilani Schweitzer talks with the audience about her son, Gabriel, who died as a result of a medical error. A nurse, attempting to silence the in-room alarms so that Ms. Schweitzer and Gabriel could get some rest, accidentally de-activated all of Gabriel's alarms, including those that would normally sound at nursing stations. Therefore, clinicians were not alerted when Gabriel went into cardiac arrest, and he passed away. Ms. Schweitzer is a powerful witness to transparency as healing, and praises the hospital for giving her what she needed: "an honest, transparent explanation of what has happened...a full apology, and...to know and see that changes have been made to ensure that what has happened to us, never happens to anyone else." These elements, all of which the hospital employed, helped Ms. Schweitzer to get through such a difficult situation, and to use her experience as a rallying cry for Communication, Apology, and Resolution in response to adverse events.
Ms. Schweitzer believes that a culture change is possible -- and so do we. Please watch the TEDx Talk here.
