Committees and Units

Patient's Rights Committee
Prevention of Domestic Violence Committee
Infection Control Committee
Emergency and Disaster Committee
Risk Management and Patient Safety Unit
Ethics Committee for Patient's Rights
Institutional Review Board (Ethics Committee)

Patient's Rights Committee

972-8-6732342

Aims of the Committee

The Patient's Rights Committee was established according the the Patient's Rights Law in order to assimilate the issue of patient's rights among the employee's and to deal with questions and complaints on these matters. The committee placed posters of the decleration of the patient's rights in all the departments and outpatient clinics and folders at each nurse desk which assembles all the regulations and directives of the Ministry of Health regarding patient's rights. In addition, the committee acts to raise the awareness among the caregiver population regarding the issue of assigning a legal proxy by the patients through departmental advertisements. The publicizing of this issue brought to a gradual increase in the requests of patients to assign a legal proxy. The Ministry of Health held throughout 2004 a national patient's rights survey in all the medical centers in Israel, and the Barzilai Medical Center won higher grades than the national average.

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Prevention of Domestic Violence Committee

972-8-6745124

Aims of the Committee

Preventing domestic violence is always on the agenda of the Barzilai Medical Center's management, and the hospital is leading the hospital community in awareness and reports to the Ministry of Health.

The Prevention of Domestic Violence Committee acts in the following areas:

Identifying battered woman in the Department for Emergency Medicine and other departments.
Identifying battered minors, and minors under high risk of domestic violence in the Department for Emergency Medicine and in the pediatrics, orthopedics and surgery departments.
Identifying battered elderly and elderly under high risk of domestic violence in the Department for Emergency Medicine and other departments.
Setting treatment guidelines for women who suffered sexual assault
Setting treatment guidelines for battered minors and minors under high risk of domestic violence while maintaining regular contact with welfare authorities

The committee holds departmental seminars to raise the awareness among the employees. In addition, th committee has hanged posters all over the hospital note-boards and distributed informational pamphlets for patients with contact telephone number for consultation.

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Infection Control Committee

972-8-6745754

Aims of the Committee

The aims of the Infection Control Committee is to undertake measure to stop the spread of infection in the hospital departments while assimilating the appropriate knowledge to the medical staff, setting procedures for the treatment of antibiotic resistant bacteria, determining the appropriate approach and procedures for treating patients with infectious diseases, for quarantine, follow up on acquired infections in the hospital and infections after procedures.

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Emergency and Disaster Committee

Committee Secretary
Sarit Itach

972-8-6745600 972-8-6732342

Aims of the Committee

Prepare the medical center and staff to absorb and treat casualties from mass-casualty events in peace and wartime.
Prepare the medical center and staff to absorb and treat casualties from toxicological mass-casualty events in peace and wartime.
Prepare the medical center and the staff to absorb and treat casualties of the avian flu and other infectious and biological agents in peace and wartime.
Prepare action plans and drills for the different scenarios.
Periodical inspection for functionality and intactness of the medical and other equipment for emergencies and disasters.
Quarterly control of the emergency calling up system.
Periodical meetings with the different teams of the hospital for refreshing and updating their knowledge in emergency and disaster situations.
Perform annual and bi-annual drills under the supervision of the Emergency Department of the Ministry of Health and the Home Front Command of the IDF.
Serve as supervisors of drills in different hospitals in Israel.
Observe and learn from drills conducted in other hospitals

Click here to view pictures from real events and drills

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Risk Management and Patient Safety Unit

Unit secretary
Dahan Lior

972-8-6745765 972-8-6732342

Aims of the Committee

The committee has been founded in order to advance the quality in the hospital in all aspects of administration, paramedical, nursing and medical fields, to manage risks before their incidence and to learn lessons from the events. The unit members include 3 senior physicians, one senior nurse and and industry and management engineer.

The activities of the committee are diverse. The committee members view the center employees as an important pool of knowledge and ideas for improving the quality and thus began to encourage the submission of improvement proposals. In addition, the unit issues a patient safety newsletter that deals with process improvement, prevention of medicine errors and various warnings in using drugs and different equipment. This newsletter is distributed to the Ministry of Health and all the hospitals in Israel.

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Ethics Committee for Patient's Rights

972-8-6745946

Aims of the Committee

The Ethics Committee for Patient's Rights was founded according to the Patient's Rights Law. The members of the committee include senior physicians and social workers from within the hospital, a lawyer from outside, and representatives of the public. The committee, as defined in the Patient's Rights Law, assembles ad-hoc according to the demand of the head of a department or the director of the hospital, and discusses the problematic issue of giving medical care to a patient against his will or the custodian's will, and non-disclosure of information that might harm the patient. The committee does not deal with medical emergencies or life-saving interventions, since there are clear and defined regulations for these situations.

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Institutional Review Board (Ethics Committee)

Committee Secretary
Pnina Nir

972-8-6745946

Aims of the Committee

The Barzilai Medical Center is affiliated to the Faculty of Health Science at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Being a university hospital, physicians conduct many researches in the various fields of medicine including clinical researches, observations, surveys and basic research. The aim of the Institutional Review Board (Ethics Committee) is to review and examine the proposed researches from the points of view of the patient's benefit, his safety and his rights. The committee gathers once in a month and a half on average and discusses the submitted research proposals, apporve requests for extension of research date, read reports on adverse events which had occurred in researches Israel and abroad and authorizes new experiments according to the International Helsinki Directives. Some of the committee members have taken part in the international course of "Good Clinical Practice" (GCP) and the other members are to take part in future ones. The hospital has its internal comptroller body whose role is to perform ongoing control over the experiments authorized by the Ethics Committee according to universal standards.

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