Josie King had healed well enough from an accidental scalding that she was about to be released from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

But her mother, Sorrel King, thought that something wasn't quite right. She voiced her concerns to the hospital staff.

"They listened to me, but they didn't hear me," she said.

Josie died Feb. 22, 2001. She was 18 months old.

Mrs. King, of Baltimore, now an advocate for patient safety, will tell her story at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Fred M. Rogers Center at Saint Vincent College in Unity.

The free talk is open to the public. The Westmoreland County Bar Association is promoting it on its calendar as "the human side of medical malpractice."

Mrs. King also will sign copies of her recently released book, "Josie's Story: A Mother's Inspiring Crusade to Make Medical Care Safe."

"Sorrel King has been a leader in focusing not only on the clinical professionals, but on the consumer, in a collaborative effort," said Robin Jennings, director of communications for Excela Health. The talk is co-sponsored by the Latrobe Area Hospital Charitable Foundation and Westmoreland/Frick Hospital Foundation, with support from Excela Health's Medical Executive Committee.

"We want people to hear a compelling family story as to why patient safety is so important," Mrs. Jennings said. "Mrs. King is the face of when it doesn't work.

"We are doing this because errors can happen even in destination places like Johns Hopkins, and it's not a question of if errors will happen, but when they will happen."

Excela Health has rapid response teams that patients or their families can summon if they have questions or fears about a patient's treatment or well-being. The We Care Hotline includes multi-disciplinary teams and programs that cover everything from hand-washing to preventing central line bloodstream infections and wrong-site surgeries.

"Creating a culture of patient safety requires all members of a hospital -- including doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators and other employees -- to be involved," said Denise Addis, Excela's chief quality officer and director of patient safety. "We also find it very important to have patients and families engaged in their care, too."

Things went wrong for Josie. Mrs. King said her daughter was thirsty but wasn't getting intravenous fluids or fluids by mouth, and there was a question about whether a nurse understood a doctor's change in medication.

"There were lots of different ways that her death could have been avoided," Mrs. King said. "If I had been able to call a rapid response team, that might have saved her. If they had noticed a decrease in her weight, and if they had listened to me and given her something to drink, it might have saved her."

When Josie died, Mrs. King said she and her husband, Tony, were "pretty much determined to take [the hospital] down. We were ready to destroy them."

An attorney advised them to not go to the media yet, lest they become "one sad story that will be forgotten." Later, the couple refused to take the settlement they were awarded.

"We thought that accepting money for the death of our daughter was disgusting," Mrs. King said. "Then our lawyer asked if we wanted to leave the money and be holier than thou and walk away, or did we want to do something positive?

"It's all about making choices. You either let something kill you, or you do something about it. We have three other children and this was killing our family, so we decided to turn it around and do something positive."

The couple established the Josie King Foundation with a mission of preventing patients from being harmed by medical errors.

"I turned to Rick Kidwell, Johns Hopkins' risk manager at the time, and figured he would know if Josie's death was a freak accident," Mrs. King said. "He said no, this happens all the time. He said 98,000 die every year from medical errors."

The foundation gave part of the settlement to Johns Hopkins to establish a patient safety program, then Mrs. King took the mission on the road. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center system, where Mr. Kidwell is now an attorney, was the first to collaborate with her and the foundation.

Tami Minnier, now chief quality control officer for UPMC, started the first rapid response team, called Condition H -- for help -- at UPMC Shadyside. The teams are now in all 10 UPMC hospitals.

"In the last 12 months across all the hospitals, we had 167 calls, and 90 percent resulted in meeting the patients' needs," said Cindy Liberi, project manager for UPMC's Donald D. Wolf Jr. Center for Quality Improvement and Innovation. "Of those, 44 percent were communications breakdowns."

Despite the personal tragedy, Mrs. King remains confident in the medical profession.

"People ask what to do if you're a patient, or a loved one is a patient, and my answer is to trust that you are in a good place and have faith in the doctors and nurses who are caring for you," she said. "No one goes to medical or nursing school wanting to hurt anyone. ... If something doesn't seem right, if you have a question, trust your gut reaction and don't be afraid to speak up. Don't be afraid to say you need help."

Reservations to attend Mrs. King's talk are requested by tomorrow. Call 1-877-771-1234. Continuing education credit hours are available for medical and legal professionals.

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