Could change be as simple as putting down our old conceptions? Charles Denham, MD, chairman of the Global Patient Safety Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, said it wouldn’t be enough just to change the healthcare education system; we also need to change what and how we teach. “We’re failing by just delivering knowledge,” he said in his keynote. “It’s not about the what, it’s the why.”

The result of this failure: “We’re killing a staggering number of Medicare beneficiaries,” Dehman said. And we’re doing it at great expense. When it comes to healthcare, “we’re 37th in the world on quality, and we’re first in dollars.”

Continuing healthcare educators can help change this, he said. Using video clips of his movies “Chasing Zero” and “Surfing the Tsunami,” he emphasized that “this is not about business anymore, it’s personal...appealing to the heads, hearts, hands, and voice is all a part of medicine.” And medical education that results in, ultimately, a safer system for patients.