Clinical Conversations

September 16th, 2011

Podcast 130: If you’re a clinician concerned about health costs, wash your hands — don’t just wring them

Health Affairs has a study in which a few simple, but rigorously followed patient-care procedures in a pediatric ICU dropped infection rates, mortality, lengths of hospital stay, and total costs. Sound too good to be true? Well, it wasn’t exactly easy, but the results were real and measurable. Listen in and see whether this could […]

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April 9th, 2010

Podcast 82: Checklists save lives — lots of lives. Becoming a clinical automaton.

Repetitive tasks, like making sure to wash your hands after seeing each patient, may seem like drudgery, but they save patients’ lives. This week we talk with Prof. Elizabeth Robb and Sir Brian Jarman about their success at chopping hospital mortality rates with simple checklists. Sir Brian has offered to monitor your hospital’s stats for free. […]

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