The Guide to Improving Patient Safety in Primary Care Settings by Engaging Patients and Families was developed as the result of a contract award to MedStar Health from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Over two years of work went into developing the materials and field testing them to ensure that they would be useful for primary care practices.
All materials can be found at www.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/patient-family-engagement/pfeprimarycare/index.html.
The Be Prepared To Be Engaged toolkit will help patients and their families prepare for and become more fully engaged in their medical appointments—to be ready for the appointment, to speak up, to ask questions, to take notes.
The Create a Safe Medicine List Together strategy engages patients and families to actively participate in developing a complete and accurate medicine list.
The emphasis of the Warm Handoff Plus is specifically on engaging the patient and family in the handoff within the primary care practice.
Teach-back is an evidence-based health literacy intervention that promotes patient engagement, patient safety, adherence, and quality.
Other materials were developed to support the four main intervetions from the project. This included reference materials and an infographic.
The materials above are the final product, while the materials below were the ones developed as the first iteration of the project before field testing.
