Dr. Claude Laflamme has been appointed as Chair of the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (CAS) Patient Safety Committee. The three-year appointment is effective July 1, 2015. Dr. Laflamme is the Director of Cardiac Anesthesia/TEE and the Anesthesia Quality and Patient Safety Lead at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario. He is also the physician lead for the Safer Healthcare Now! Surgical Site Infection intervention. He was appointed as the Canadian Patient Safety Institute representative on the CAS Patient Safety Committee in 2013.
“The CAS Patient Safety Committee is excited about what we can do to advance patient safety education across the country,” says Dr. Laflamme. “We need to move our unique clinical practice to a broader spectrum of clinical activity. The challenge is to ensure that the concept of global patient safety is embedded into every anesthesiologist’s practice, with the mindset that we not only care for the patient inside the operating room, but also participate in the patient’s care across the continuum of care, from pre-op, to post-op, and to home care after surgery, particularly in the area of pain control.”
Another priority for the Patient Safety Committee is to advance patient safety communication and education around informed consent and to engage patients in their pre-op and post-op care.
The CAS Patient Safety Committee is responsible for advising the CAS Board of Directors on matters pertaining to patient safety initiatives, including safe medication practices, simulation, anesthesia safety database, workplace and human factors, education and research, and standards. The Committee also coordinates the Dr. John Wade – CPSI Patient Safety Symposium at the CAS Annual Meeting and reviews abstracts eligible for the Ian White Patient Safety Award.
The CAS Standards Committee and the Patient Safety Committee work closely together to ensure standards of practice and patient safety are addressed in tandem in anaesthesiology clinical practice.
Congratulations, Dr. Laflamme!
