In this powerful webinar, Laura Townsend, co-founder of the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation, shares the story of her mother, Louise Batz, whose death from a preventable medication error became the catalyst for a mission to reduce harm by helping patients and families become active members of the care team.
Joining Laura are:
- Elise Matocha from Seton Healthcare Family, who describes how the Batz Guide is used in pre-operative classes to prepare patients to speak up and participate in their care.
- Carol Ratton, who shares the leadership and cultural work required to integrate patient partnership into daily clinical practice.
Together, they show how patient engagement is not a slogan—it is a practical, system-level strategy for preventing errors.
The Story Behind the Mission
Louise Batz entered the hospital for routine knee replacement surgery. A combination of medications, lack of monitoring, and breakdowns in communication led to respiratory depression and a fatal brain injury.
Laura describes asking many questions that night—none of which addressed the risks that mattered most. That realization led to a simple but profound idea:
What if patients and families had a practical guide to ask the right questions at the right time?
The Batz Guide: A Tool for Patient Partnership
The Foundation developed practical guides (and a mobile app) that help patients and families:
- Understand common safety risks (falls, infections, medications, monitoring)
- Organize questions and information
- Participate meaningfully in conversations with caregivers
- Recognize when to speak up
These guides are now used across multiple hospitals, specialties, and patient populations, including pediatric and transplant care.
How Seton Healthcare Introduced the Guide
At Seton, the guide is introduced in pre-operative joint replacement classes. Patients attend with a “co-pilot” (family member or friend) and are explicitly invited to be active participants in care.
Initial staff concerns included:
- Fear that patients would become suspicious
- Worry about increased time demands at the bedside
- Concern that the guide was too detailed
What they discovered was the opposite:
- Patients became less anxious
- Questions became more focused and meaningful
- Transparency improved trust
- The guide fit naturally with bedside communication, care boards, and daily routines
The Cultural Work Required
Dr. Ratton emphasizes that this is a culture change, not a tool rollout.
Key elements include:
- Leadership support and visible commitment
- Unit-level champions
- Integration into existing workflows (not extra work)
- Ongoing staff orientation and reinforcement
- Recognition programs like the “Angel Hero Award”
This is about shifting from paternalism to partnership.
Why This Still Isn’t Widely Discussed
The presenters candidly discuss why preventable harm is still not openly talked about:
- Fear, shame, and defensiveness in healthcare culture
- Reluctance to acknowledge system failures
- Misplaced focus on blaming individuals
- Patients feeling too vulnerable to question caregivers
The Batz Guide reframes this conversation as collaborative, not accusatory.
Key Takeaway
Patient safety is not just the responsibility of clinicians.
When patients and families are given simple, practical tools and invited into the care team, they become a powerful safeguard against error—while strengthening trust, communication, and care quality.
This is not about blame.
It is about partnership.
.svg)
