Davee Innovations: Optimizing Communication in the Emergency Department

Welcome to the Davee Innovations.

The goal of this initiative, created by the support of the Ken M. Davee Foundation, is to optimize communication between doctors, nurses, patients and families in the emergency department.

We will accomplish this mission in 4 primary ways:

1.     Listening to the patient and family and devising solutions to meet their important needs during the stressful process of emergency care.

2.     Aggregating what is known, broadly, about communication in the medical environment, other high reliability industries, and among high performance teams, then applying the lessons to the emergency department.

3.     Integrating the best practices into the daily operations of the department as well as the educational programs for students, residents, and senior clinicians.

4.     Conducting original research to ensure insight into needs, opportunities, and impact of the initiatives.

Our mission is to ensure that patients are at the center of the care process. Success is defined by meeting the information needs of patients and their families, maximizing the therapeutic benefits of compassionate communication, optimizing communication between members of the care team, and at the same time delivering the very best technical care.

The fast-paced, high threat environment of the ED presents many challenges, different from other healthcare settings. In the high stakes, high risk environment of the ED, when the patients and doctors do not know each other, and when testing and treatments may have important consequences, both the technical decisions and the human relationships must be optimal. This initiative will focus on these human relationships and interactions. We hope that the lessons learned through this initiative will be applied not only in the emergency department here, but also in emergency departments throughout the United States.

This website will provide a gateway to the many activities that are occurring as part of this initiative. In addition, this site aggregates medical communication resources.

We are open to your thoughts, insights, and feedback. Thank you for accessing our site.

James G. Adams, MD Professor and Chair Department of Emergency Medicine