Heart Diseases and Therapeutics

High value, safe and reliable cardiac patient care is all about enabling cohesive and trusting teams while focusing on coproduction of exceptionable patient outcomes. Improving patient safety in a reliable and sustained manner requires developing a structure and process to address the gaps in care, using a methodology for improvement, and selecting appropriate, sustainable process and outcome measures. Genuine teamwork in most of healthcare remains elusive. Cardiac care teams fall prey to five pitfalls that cannot be addressed effectively in isolation. In reality these five themes--building trust, conflict management, engagement, accountability, and measurement, are interrelated and fundamental to achieving reliable performance ethically, financially, and organizationally. The talk will explore 15 years of applied research, case studies, and practical methods applied in several cardiac care services to deliver reliable and safe care.