robsyvertsen.org

Last night, 70% of our neighbours decided they’d rather risk their families lives than stand in the cold when the fire alarm went off. This is the fifth time our fire alarm went off this year. Again, it turned out to be a false alarm. Last time we were told it was a faulty sensor. Was there a thorough root cause analysis done? If so, why did we have a false alarm again?

About 30% of our building went outside. The other 70% must have assumed it was another false alarm and decided not to go outside. The fire alarm has lost it’s effectiveness. It’s no longer capable of doing it’s job. Even if it does go off when there’s a fire nobody will listen. Doing an effective root cause analysis and communicating it to the families living in this building can save lives.

Newsweek is running an article by Donald M. Berwick, M.D. titled Keys to Safer Hospitals. This article scares the hell out of me!

We have identified six basic measures that could save as many as 100,000 lives a year if even 2,000 hospitals adopted them.

100,000 preventable deaths per year in American hospitals? Is he serious?!? That’s just insane! What about in Canada? I wonder if the numbers are similar.