PATIENT SAFETY
Introduction and Rationale
Patient safety is a discipline in the healthcare field that arose from the evolved healthcare systems, resulting in the rise of patient harm while there are being treated in the healthcare facilities. The aim of the patient safety discipline in health care is to prevent and reduce the risks or errors that lead to a patient’s harm during the treatment process. This discipline’s primary cornerstone is to come up with improvements in health care by learning from the adverse events and errors that occurred in the past. Therefore patient safety is vital in delivering quality health services to the patient, leading to better patient outcomes. There is a global consensus that for health services to be considered quality, they should be effective, patient-centred and safe.
Additionally, for healthcare benefits to be realized, the services must be fast, equitable, efficient, and well-integrated. Hence the patient safety issue that will be addressed in this paper is errors caused by information mishandling and lack of coordination from the nurses in a healthcare delivery setting through technology. The reason for choosing these two issues in a health care delivery setting is that they are the leading causes of errors than affect patient safety.
Background and Scope
Nowadays, most health care facilities have mature health systems which entail complicated healthcare settings that make the medical personnel prone to mistakes (“Patient safety,” 2019). These mistakes can be catastrophic as they can harm a patient in ways that can lead to death. For example, a patient may be allocated the wrong medication as the patient’s prescription may pass through various levels of care starting with the doctor who prescribed the drug to the pharmacist who dispensed the drugs and finally to the nurse who may administers the medication to the wrong patient (“Patient safety,” 2019). In this case, poor coordination and communication between the health care professionals are to blame for the mistake that can cost the patient their lives. As the saying goes to error is to human. Hence, it is impractical and unrealistic to expect flawless performance from a person working in a stressful environment such as a health facility (“Patient safety,” 2019). Similarly, a study conducted in Australia that focused on the gaps in the medical field that caused a patient safety issues was the failure of the nurse to respond to a deteriorating patient, a lapse in critical thinking, and inattentiveness to the simple things required by a patient such as regular checkups (Jones & Johnstone, 2019. Therefore as we cannot assume that human perfection is possible in a stressful environment like the medical field, hospitals need to incorporate technological tools to help minimize human error.
Goals
Invest in Technology
With modern advancements in technology, health organizations have many options to choose from that will help them in their daily operations. The medical technological tools suitable for a health care facility are dependent on the issue or problem that needs to be solved to ensure patient safety and better health outcomes. In this case, the technological tools needed are patient information management systems and others that enhance coordination among the workplace’s medical personnel.
Catering to the Patient Needs
This goal will entail obtaining complete and accurate information about the patient as possible. This will entail precise recording of the patient’s needs in an information management tool accessible to all the medical professionals involved in the patient’s treatment (Cureatr, n.d.). This information should be updated regularly after each health care personnel attends to the patient to ensure the next person to attend to the patient obtains real-time data of the previous medications, current patient needs, and other suggestions from the last medical personnel involved in the patient’s treatment.
Engagement
This will focus on engaging the nurse and other medical personnel on the importance of the changes to be effected in the workplace and how they will make their work easier in ensuring patient safety and better health outcomes in the workplace.
Quality Model
The quality model used to analyze the patient safety issues in health facilities is Six sigma. The Six sigma entails fives steps of quality improvement, which is suitable in a health care setting. The first step is to define which entails defining who the patient is, their needs and the objectives of the quality improvement (“How adopting Six Sigma is helping to improve healthcare,” 2020). The next step of this quality improvement model is the measure which will answer questions like what the improvement will look like? And what metrics will be used to measure performance after its implementation (“How adopting Six Sigma is helping to improve healthcare,” 2020). The third step is to analyze which will help us collect and analyze the data we need before the improvements while the fourth step, improve will help us implement the tool and modifications we need to improve the process.