Children are different from adults in many respects and patient safety solutions in children's medical care must be customized to address the specific nature of patient safety risks to which children are exposed and to the specific characteristics of children in the context of medical care.

For this reason, CPSF reached out to several hospitals that provide medical care to children in the Chicago area to join together to study problems in children's medical care, to develop intervention strategies to prevent the problems and to test the effectiveness of these strategies. To date, there has been no other initiative of this type in the country. The Consortium will provide Chicago hospital specific patient safety strategies and generalizable knowledge for general improvement of patient safety of children's medical care.

Six hospitals participate in the Consortium: Advocate Lutheran General Children's Hospital, Advocate Hope Children's Hospital, Children's Memorial Hospital, John H. Stroger-Cook County Hosptial, Sinai Children's Hospital, and Loyola University Medical Center.

The Consortium has just completed a two-year study: Patient Safety: Strategies for Improving Pediatric Clinician Communication. The study focused on both effective and problematic methods, contexts, and policy or organization for clinical communication.

The Consortium is led by Jane Holl, MD MPH and Donna Woods, PhD at the Institute for Healthcare Studies, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University.

This initiative is supported by a grant from: