What This Program Covers


This program will cover the Care Partner Project’s work around infection prevention and how advocates can be involved in helping a patient avoid infections with knowledge and tools.

Karen Curtiss, BCPA will share Care Partner Project Checklists and other tools for patients and advocates for several types of hospital infections – and mainly, she’ll focus on simple, practical “how to’s” for preventing them. She will share specific tips on what to look for, what to do, how to spot early warning signs of infection and when to alert a healthcare professional.  Karen will draw on her years of experience as a patient safety activist and advocate, using case studies and storytelling to help participants understand they can be pro-active and powerful in preventing deadly hospital infections in partnership with the medical team. Karen will invite participants to share challenges and their own successful strategies to improve advocacy skills in this important area of care that can quickly become dangerous.

This program has been Approved by the PACB for 1 CE, BCPA Approved through July 24th, 2025.

About Karen Curtiss


More than 400,000 patients a year lose their lives to accidental cracks in our health care system. Karen Curtiss’s father , Bill Aydt, was one such fatality. She is determined to transform the tragedy of his death from lapses in patient safety into tangible tools other families can use to help ensure their loved ones have the best possible outcomes. To do this, she gave up a marketing career, consulting to Fortune 500 companies, to scour nursing textbooks, slog through medical studies, and speak with patient safety experts all over the globe to study how hospital care is managed; where cracks in care occur, and best clinical practices to prevent them.

Then she distilled a lot of complex medical information into quick, simple checklists all families can use to safeguard hospital care for their loved ones and support recovery at home. TheCarePartnerProject.org. offers these checklists and more as free e-guides. Karen has also built a nationwide network of community speakers for grass roots education on how to navigate the healthcare system with the know-how and confidence to ensure safe care.: (TheCarePartnerProject.org/community-education.) For those who are uninsured and don’t have any personal support during a health care crisis, The Care Partner Project provides funding for assistance from professional patient advocates.