Best practice guidelines on informed consent for weight loss surgery patients.

Objective: To provide evidence-based guidelines on informed consent and the education that underlies it for legally competent, severely obese weight loss surgery (WLS) patients.

Research Methods And Procedures: We conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature published on MEDLINE between 1984 and 2004. Three articles focused on informed consent for WLS; none was based on empirical studies.

Creating an integrated patient safety team.

Unlabelled: CREATING A PATIENT SAFETY TEAM: In May 2001 Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston) created the Patient Safety Team, which was incorporated into the pre-existing safety and quality infrastructure. ESTABLISHING THE PATIENT SAFETY TEAM'S GOALS AND INITIATIVES: The goal was to create the safest possible environment for patients and staff by creating a culture of safety, increasing the capacity to measure and evaluate processes, committing to change unsafe processes, and adopting new technologies. To achieve this mission, the following initiatives were established: create a culture of safety, increase event identification, improve event analysis, close the feedback loop, assess risk proactively, improve medication safety, and involve the patient.