Safety

2024 Pillars of Excellence Award Winners

See the extraordinary work done by the 2024 Pillars of Excellence Award winners under the Safety Pillar.

Individual

Victoria Yutko, Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Centers

To help prevent needlestick injuries, Sharp Rees-Stealy approved the use of a retractable needle technology that had initially received positive reviews. However, Victoria had concerns about its efficacy and collected feedback from staff during training.

Listening to the voice of the people, Victoria gathered data that said the new needles introduced complexity to the workflow and brought new safety issues.

Victoria spoke up for safety, shared her findings and senior leadership stopped use of the new technology.

Team

AVADE Workplace Violence Prevention Training Program Implementation, Sharp HealthCare — Multi-Entity

As violence against health care workers increases nationwide, this taskforce selected a new workplace violence prevention training program to better meet the needs of employees.

Thirty employees became certified instructors and began teaching online and in-person courses, with more than 2,200 team members completing training in the first year.

Participants say they feel more confident in handling incidents and believe the program fosters a culture of safety.

Department

Emergency Department, Sharp Grossmont Hospital

Faced with historic patient volumes, this department implemented a series of changes to ensure safe, efficient and efficacious care.

It developed a new front-end triage model, which improved patient safety by reducing discharge length of stay by 21 minutes, door-to-provider time by 12 minutes and “left without treatment” by 79%. This transformation generated over 110 hours of additional daily capacity, ensuring timely and effective care for patients.