This symbol for patient safety has straight lines and angular corners to distinguish it from porpoises and whales. It looks like someone shot John Travolta. Or like someone shouting for help, or mercy. The right hand is raised and pointed. The left is lowered and spread. It has a waist of someone physically fit. It was a vibrant, healthy, foot-tapping person until he/she sought medical care.
Many of the patients who die each year in medicine die because a Hodad was a cash cow that they let keep practicing, or because it might have hurt their reputation if they had sanctioned the problem caregiver so they quielty transferred him/her to someone else’s facility to continue being a problem there, or because the inertia to increase revenue is better served when patients are not cured the first time around, or because autopsies done to figure out how many patients died because they were misdiagnosed are expensive and possibly could tarnish the image of absolute perfection they want to believe about themselves. In short, many patients die because medicine has interests more important to it than the well being of patients.
That is one reason to have the symbol for patient safety be a chalk outline. The symbol should say that letting patients die in order to save time or make money or protect reputations is not okay with patients.