Your Inner Genius
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 88)
Margaret Tcheng Ware, 64, enjoyed a
long career as a dancer and choreogra-
pher before being sidelined by divorce,
remarriage, and motherhood. By her
early 50s she was feeling “cloaked in
a kind of flatness,” so she signed up
for a drawing class at a local art insti-
tute. “From the moment I set brush to
canvas,” says Ware, “it was clear I had
found something that engaged me.”
Within a few years she was exhib-
iting her works and selling them to
private collectors—a blossoming she
credits to something deeper than raw
talent: “Those years in dance taught
me discipline and hard work,” she
says. “And from being a dance teacher
I could see when a figure was out
of alignment; I could see when the
weight wasn’t where it should be.”
There’s a time to forge ahead pur-
posefully, Ware has learned, and a
time to let your instincts lead the way:
“So much creativity happens when
you’re least conscious of it. Soak in as
much visual and physical experience
as possible—it’s all grist for the mill.
Somehow—don’t ask me how—it will
come out in what you do creatively.”
PERHAPS IT MAKES SENSE that Ware
and her fellow artists struggle to pin-
point their motivation. Every creative
talent is unique, and the “why” ques-
tion can yield answers that change as
an artist gains self-understanding.
Jamie Katz has written for Vibe, People,
and Smithsonian magazines.
Dennis Quaid
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51)
of heparin, changed how it packaged
the two dosages. Instead of being
identical in size and similar in color—
one light and the other dark blue—the
higher dosage would now carry an
orange label and a warning. But the
company failed to recall the existing
bottles. “Companies recall dog food!”
exclaims Quaid. “Why weren’t they recalled?” The heparin given to the Quaid
twins bore the old packaging.
The Quaids have sued Baxter for
negligence; the case is currently
pending. The couple settled with
Cedars-Sinai when, according to
Quaid, the hospital agreed to make
changes to prevent such an overdose
from occurring again. “We didn’t
want to sue the hospital because we
need really good hospitals,” Quaid explains. “And as part of the settlement,
Cedars spent millions—on electronic
record keeping, bedside bar coding,
computerized physician-order entry
systems—to improve patient safety. I
have to commend them for that.” (A
spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai says
the hospital began implementing such
safety measures before the twins’ accident. “Immediately following this
incident,” adds spokesperson Simi
Singer, “we began additional focused
education on medication safety and
have implemented additional procedures and protocols for our pharmacy
and nursing staff.”)
In early 2008 Dennis and Kimberly
established the Quaid Foundation,
which called for hospitals to adopt
bedside bar coding, requiring scans on
patient’s wristbands to match scans on
medications. “It’s based on the same
technology that you have at every gas
station and grocery store in America,”
Quaid says. “If it’s the wrong medicine
or the wrong patient, an alarm goes
off.” Shortly after, Quaid met Charles
Denham, M.D., a leader in the patient-
safety movement and founder and
chair of the nonprofit Texas Medi-
cal Institute of Technology (TMIT),
which tests systems to improve health
care safety. The son of a NASA rocket
scientist and a jet pilot himself, Den-
ham bonded with Quaid over their
mutual enthusiasm for aviation—they
own the same-model jet (a Citation).
“We were a perfect team,” Denham
says. “We both believe that this is what
we’re supposed to do and that we can
save lives doing it.”
The Quaids folded their foundation
into TMIT this year. “There are thou-
sands of people who have been victims,
whose voices have never been heard,”
says Quaid. “We’re now coming togeth-
er and demanding that something hap-
pen.” To that end, Quaid is narrating a
series of documentaries produced by
Denham about medical harm, which
TMIT is distributing free of charge to
every hospital in the country. The first
in the series, “Chasing Zero: Winning
the War on Healthcare Harm” (avail-
able for free download from TMIT’s
website, safetyleaders.org), tells the
stories of medical-error victims (in-
cluding Sue Sheridan), as well as pro-
viders who have made mistakes.
