The Truth about Big Medicine: Righting the Wrongs for Better Health Care

Cheryl Brown, DBA, RN, U.S. Army Nurse retired, serves as an Army Medical Command Patient Safety Nurse Consultant for patient safety managers assisting with Sentinel Event root cause analysis and providing feedback for process improvement. She served as Commander of a Combat Support Hospital and is a trauma nurse veteran of the Persian Gulf War. She contributed clinical expertise for a ground nurse character in the book Centerline. She completed research on Automated Dispensing Cabinet Improvements Implemented in Army Hospitals to Decrease Medication Errors and is a coauthor for Overcoming Benchmarking Reluctance: A Literature Review (Benchmarking: An International Journal, 2012). John T. James, PhD, is the former chief toxicologist at a federal agency where he received numerous meritorious awards and wrote many book chapters and monographs dealing with spaceflight safety. As a result of the loss of his oldest son to medical errors in 2002, he has become a patient safety activist, having published a book in 2007 about his son's care (A Sea of Broken Hearts) and proposing a national patient bill of rights to empower and protect patients. He publishes a monthly electronic newsletter on patient safety issues and has been appointed to the State of Texas Healthcare Acquired Infection and Preventable Adverse Event Advisory Panel. He just published an evidence-based, peer-reviewed study in a medical journal in which he estimated that more than 400,000 Americans have their lives shortened by medical errors in hospitals. He founded Patient Safety America, whose website is http://PatientSafetyAmerica.com.