Our Mission
Our mission is to partner with hospitals, healthcare professionals and patients and families around the world to improve the care, safety and quality of life for everyone with a tracheostomy.
Our Vision
Safe, effective tracheostomy care on a global scale, achieved through data-driven innovations of interprofessional teams of physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, speech therapists, patients, and families.
Key Drivers
Leaders on the GTC steering committee and at other hospitals around the world have shown that it is possible to bring about truly transformative change in the quality of care for patients with tracheostomies.
While every institution’s approach has been unique, several ‘key drivers’ have been found to be critical to bringing about major improvements in trach care:
- Multi-disciplinary care. An institution-level multidisciplinary trach committee, and a multidisciplinary ‘trach team’ that meets regularly, discusses patients together, and rounds on patients together.
- Standardization of care. Agreeing that within your particular institution, trach care will follow a planned protocol or care pathway unless there is a medical reason to deviate from this pathway.
- Broad staff education. Ensuring that every doctor, nurse and ancillary provider is well trained in trach care and in managing trach emergencies.
- Patient and family involvement. Involving patients/families in improvement efforts and regularly getting feedback from patients and families.
- Entering data; tracking your performance; bench-marking with other institutions.
History
The Global Tracheostomy Collaborative was formed by Dr. David Roberson, an ENT specialist at Harvard, following work by many researchers demonstrating that tracheostomy and laryngectomy patients are at high risk for preventable adverse events – often with tragic outcomes.
Dr. Roberson invited specialists from multiple disciplines from around the world to a foundational meeting in Glasgow, Scotland in July 2012. This group’s support and enthusiasm led to the founding of the GTC.
Subsequently, the Steering Committee met again in London, UK in April 2013 to finalize plans for the collaborative.
The GTC held kickoff meetings and began enrolling hospitals in the USA in Boston in April 2014, in the UK in London in July 2014, and in Australasia in Melbourne in October 2014. Approximately 40 hospitals from around the world have joined the collaborative.
The Collaborative was approved as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization in the United States of America in June 2014.
Dedication
This collaborative and our work is dedicated to our patients and their families, past, present and future.