The Vanderbilt Health Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy (CPPA), provides services, education, and research that support the pursuit of professionalism and high reliability for medical centers and health systems worldwide.
Our programs, PARS® (Patient Advocacy Reporting System) and CORSsm (Coworker Observation Reporting System), use the observations and experiences of patients, families, and fellow medical team members to create local and national data and discipline-specific benchmarks to identify, address, and support the small group of physicians, advanced practice professionals, nurses, physician assistants, and academic/research faculty who model disrespect towards patients, colleagues, and trainees.
The CPPA team, in partnership with research colleagues across the United States, has shown that clinical team members identified as modeling disrespect are associated with excessive malpractice claims experience. Their patients are at elevated risk for experience avoidable medical and surgical complications. Disrespectful behavior has also been shown to contribute to nursing turnover, reduce job satisfaction and threaten teamwork. In addition, individuals identified as high risk may be facing challenges that interfere with their ability to perform at their best professionally.
CPPA partners with leaders from more than 200 health systems worldwide. Our work supports the core values and professional expectations that are foundational for effective teams in pursuit of high reliability and the delivery of safe, high quality healthcare, education, and research.
