Our Mission
Talia’s Voice: Projects for Patient Safety seeks to change the culture in medical settings, improve care, and save lives by getting healthcare providers to listen to each patient, stand up for them, and take appropriate action on their behalf.

What We Do

Education

Education is our most important tool and we concentrate on:

  • Listening as a value
  • The impact of ineffective communication on patient outcomes
  • What effective communication between members of a healthcare team looks like
  • How to communicate effectively with patients
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Research

Talia’s Voice supports research in the following areas:

  • Evidence-based research into effective communication strategies in medical settings
  • Evidence-based research on how best to teach effective listening and communication skills in medical settings
  • Curriculum development
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Speaking Out

Our focus is on:

  • Telling Talia’s story
  • Networking to bring together and draw on the work of those in the field of patient safety
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Talia’s Story

Delightful, bubbly, creative, and athletic, Talia Goldenberg died at age 23 because her doctors, nurses, and support staff, all failed to listen when Talia, her physician father, and her mother repeatedly told them that Talia couldn’t breathe.  For 20 hours, each member of Talia’s healthcare team dismissed or ignored Talia’s symptoms and pleas for help. Had any one of them listened and acted on her behalf, Talia would be alive today.

 

Read the full story

Speaking Engagements and Presentations

Giving Talia a Voice

Talia’s parents, Dr. Jeff Goldenberg and Naomi Kirtner, have a powerful story to share. As founders of Talia’s Voice: Projects for Patient Safety, they are agents for change, telling Talia’s story in hospitals, medical and nursing schools, health management programs—anywhere that healthcare workers and patients intersect. They tailor their talks to the group to whom they are speaking and are comfortable with large and small audiences. If you work at, or are an administrator in, a hospital or medical educational setting, please contact us. The impact of Talia’s story will be lasting.

 

“There is a buzz in the house from your visit.” — Jon Friedenberg, COO, Marin General Hospital

 

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News & Updates

What We're Doing and Thinking

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

Oct 31, 2023

In the Wizard of Oz, as Dorothy’s world changes from black and white to technicolor, she turns to Toto and says, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” From the moment we lost Talia, our world did the opposite, changing from technicolor to black and white. We...

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Getting Things Done – July 2023

Jul 17, 2023

As a child, Talia had a knack for figuring out how to… figure things out. When she didn’t have the skills she needed to do something, she would at first get frustrated; but soon she would become single-minded about learning how to do the thing, keeping at it with a...

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End-of-Year Newsletter 2022

Dec 21, 2022

 Our larger-than-life, lion-hearted brother-in-law, Gabriel Romano, died this month. His daughter (Talia’s first cousin who is herself a new doctor) and Jeff were by his side as Gabe took his last breath. He fought hard to overcome the particularly aggressive cancer...

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