Public Health Issue - Harvard School of Dental Medicine

public health focusJan ReissElsbeth Kalenderian, right, chair andassociate professor of oral healthpolicy and epidemiology at HSDM,poses at the EZCodes conferencewith Dr. David Clark, health scientistadministrator of the Behavioral andSocial Sciences Research Branch,Division of Extramural Research, atthe National Institute of Dental andCraniofacial Research. Kalenderian haspromoted use of the EZCodes at HSDMand other institutions nationwide.HSDM Receives NIH Patient Safety Research GrantAlthough clinical adverse events exact significant tolls on the health of individual patients and burden the nationwith massive, avoidable costs, currently little to no understanding exists about the type or frequency of patient safety issuesin dentistry. Dentists, like physicians, routinely perform highly technical procedures in complex environments, work inteams, and use a multitude of devices and tools, but the patient safety revolution has bypassed dentistry. Only the grossestof dental care adverse events have been documented.In order to reduce patient harm and improve the quality of care delivered, there is a critical need to define andidentify adverse events in dental settings. In the long term, it is important to understand the causes of dental adverse eventsand develop interventions to minimize their occurrence. Elsbeth Kalenderian, chair and associate professor of oral healthpolicy and epidemiology, and colleagues recently received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop the toolsnecessary to document dental adverse events and generate a classification scheme and repository that can help organizeand link adverse events—both of which are entirely novel contributions to dental care and research. These steps will enablea new field of dental research that has broad and direct implications for patient safety, quality improvement, and healtheconomics. As part of the project, five dental organizations, which together see more than 100,000 patients per year, willbegin to systematically collect and analyze adverse events, thus creating a rich set of data to improve the quality of dentalcare. In addition, this project will greatly raise awareness of the importance of patient safety in dentistry.harvard dental bulletin • winter 2012–1313