Empowering Patient Safety Outreach Through Interprofessional Partnerships: Educating Our Communities

Abstract

This article reports on an interprofessional approach to outreach and the value of partnerships for health information provision in rural underserved communities in which personnel and time is limited. The Partnering for Patient Empowerment through Community Awareness (PPECA)-II program describes how the Hardin Library for Health Sciences partnered with the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics to develop a patient safety education program. The authors discuss how the work complemented the library's role in provision of referral, information support, and educational services to critical access hospitals in rural Iowa. The authors discuss how the program was evaluated, provide next steps for hospital librarians to implement a similar program in their communities, and highlight the effects of partnership on a librarians' role in patient safety and other outreach work.

KEYWORDS:

• collaboration
• consumer education
• outreach
• partnership
• patient safety
• public health
• public library

This project has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. NO1–LM–6–3503.