The Doctor’s Advocate | Fourth Quarter 2018
Foundation News

The Doctors Company Foundation Funds 2018 Telluride Experience Patient Safety Camps

The Doctors Company Foundation recently awarded grants to MedStar Washington Hospital Foundation and the University of North Carolina School of Nursing to support the annual Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety (AELPS) student summer camps.

The Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety: The Telluride Experience is an internationally recognized program developed to help reduce medical errors by improving the formal patient safety curriculum currently within traditional healthcare education models and health science schools.

The Telluride Experience immerses resident physicians, medical students, and nursing students in four-day sessions. The program uses nontraditional educational methodologies—including stories, narratives, simulation, and gaming—to train future healthcare leaders on risk reduction and quality improvement concepts, strategies, tools, and techniques.

Learn more about the Foundation’s work at tdcfoundation.com.

“I was honored and humbled to be selected for this program, and I hope to take the lessons learned and incorporate them into my graduate education and my work as a pediatric intensive care unit RN. I hope to continue to develop as a leader and work towards becoming a change agent for patient quality and safety. As a registered nurse and future family nurse practitioner, I believe nurses are strategic in the efforts to build safe and effective healthcare systems. Thank you once again for allowing me to be a part of this program. I am forever grateful.” 

—Colleen E. McGauley, BSN, RN
Boston College Family Nurse Practitioner 2019, Massachusetts, 2018 participant

“This conference was a tremendous educational and motivating experience. Many of the concepts studied this week have been very important to me, but I've lacked the recent formal education and validation of this type of work. I now have a renewed confidence surrounding the vitality of quality improvement, patient safety initiatives, and cannot wait for the chance to bring this knowledge back to my department and institution. Thank you!” 

—Jennifer Brooks, Resident Physician, Colorado, 2016 participant

“With this continued excitement and growth around this work, it is our hope that we can continue…our vision of offering annual internationally recognized AELPS student summer camps that send student leaders back into their home environments to ‘infect’ others on patient safety, risk reduction, and quality improvement strategies for better patient care outcomes.”

—David Mayer, MD, Educational Leader and Program Facilitator


The Doctor’s Advocate is published by The Doctors Company to advise and inform its members about loss prevention and insurance issues.

The guidelines suggested in this newsletter are not rules, do not constitute legal advice, and do not ensure a successful outcome. They attempt to define principles of practice for providing appropriate care. The principles are not inclusive of all proper methods of care nor exclusive of other methods reasonably directed at obtaining the same results.

The ultimate decision regarding the appropriateness of any treatment must be made by each healthcare provider considering the circumstances of the individual situation and in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction in which the care is rendered.

The Doctor’s Advocate is published quarterly by Corporate Communications, The Doctors Company. Letters and articles, to be edited and published at the editor’s discretion, are welcome. The views expressed are those of the letter writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or official policy of The Doctors Company. Please sign your letters, and address them to the editor.

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