Sentara Turns to RCG to Produce Compelling Safety Video

It’s not often that a major organization turns the camera on itself to improve performance, but that’s exactly what Sentara Healthcare did recently with the assistance of Rubin Communications Group.

In an effort to remind all employees of the organization, which includes seven hospitals in the Hampton Roads region and a host of other treatment facilities, about the importance of safety, Sentara hired RCG to chronicle a tragic event from 2005 that occurred at its Williamsburg facility.

It involved Jim, an attorney from Los Angeles, who returned home to Williamsburg to see his aging mother, promising days earlier to his wife that he would stop drinking.  Once in his parent’s house, however, Jim went into severe alcohol withdrawal. Rushed to the hospital, he was eventually admitted into the ICU, where he was administered a strong sedative.

When another even more ill patient arrived in intensive care, however, a nurse left Jim’s monitoring station. During that time, he coded and stopped breathing. By the time attendants became aware of the situation, Jim had slipped into a vegetative state, never to recover.

For the video, Joel interviewed the widow, the nurse, hospital administrators, the pharmacy and nursing directors and others involved in the incident. The result was a powerful production, now being shown during training sessions throughout the Sentara system.

“It was a compelling video to produce,” says Joel Rubin, “and I really appreciated Sentara for allowing us to do it.  They demonstrated through this very honest production that they wanted to make sure no patient, and no health care worker, has to go through that experience again.”