Article contributed by: Emily Newhook, Community Relations Manager for MHA@GW at The Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University

Defining Adverse Medical Events

Mistakes can happen anywhere, but when it comes to fields like health care – where errors can have life-threatening consequences – we hold people to a higher standard. An adverse medical event (AME) is one such example. An AME — the result of a medical intervention rather than the underlying medical condition — is unintentional harm that can cause serious injury to a patient. AMEs run the gamut of medical problems and include hospital-acquired infections, catheter-acquired infections, surgeries done on the wrong patients or wrong area, leaving foreign bodies inside a patient after procedures, hospital falls and slips, incorrect medication and pressure ulcers among others. Read more

National Nurses Week is an annual observance that runs from May 6 through May 12. The history of how this came to be is interesting. In 1974, the International Council of Nurses proclaimed May 12, Florence Nightingale’s birthday, as International Nurse Day. Beginning in 1953, many attempts were made to enact an official national observance of nurses. Then, in 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation declaring May 6th as National Nurses Day. And in 1993, the American Nurses Association declared May 6 through May 12 as permanent dates to celebrate National Nurses Week. Since then, May 8 has been designated as National Student Nurses Day and the Wednesday of Nurses Week has been designated as National School Nurse Day. Read more