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Essays on patient safety improvements
Essays on patient safety improvements
Essays on patient safety improvements
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In saying 1.5 million Americans have witnessed hospital errors in the care of the medical center or even 40,000-100,000 deaths is a ridiculous amount of faults. Errors should be minimized, especially when dealing with people’s lives. The number of deaths is so high hospitals should take notice and really pinpoint where their facility is miscalculating and create in-service training to all employees and not just the ones that are making the errors but all employees. This will decrease the chances of errors made in the hospital. With continuous training every month there can be a huge change in the number of mistakes. The fact that these inaccuracies are even causing deaths really highlight the importance of the need for a change. Families …show more content…
having to plan funerals because someone did not do their job right for whatever reason is no excuse. The employee who made this mistake would feel the same way if the situation was reverse and they now had to bury their mom, dad, sister, brother, spouse, child, or even friend. They should treat the patient as if they were treating their family member or friend to ensure them the best care. Looking at the point of giving the patient the wrong drug or dose can be prevented with constantly checking the medication, the patient identifier, and the medication administration record at least 3 times before administering the medication.
That is so simple in order to prevent any miscalculation. This is totally unacceptable when everyone expects the medical doctors, nurses, and RNA’s to be experts in their field of practice. The fact that physicians or other health care providers are not washing their hands as often to prevent infection is pure laziness. You learn that hand hygiene is important even when you are a young child and if you have went to medical or nursing school your instructors definitely highlight hand hygiene because of this very reason. Hand washing is fundamental and should not be taken for granted when involving a patient’s care. If the issue of overcrowding appears then that as an issue of the person who schedules procedures and appointments and that they should check their records for appointment before scheduling anyone for services. Now if it’s the case of emergency rooms or admitting some for an illness on spot and there are not available beds or operating rooms I’m sorry but I feel that the doctor should refer the patient to another hospital. I’m sure the physician or facility doesn’t want to give up that money but the main goal is to ensure that the patient gets the care that he or she needs and will gain health and if the facility they
originally go to does not have the adequate resources to allocate to the patient efficiently then the patient should be referred to a hospital that can guarantee them this quality. Some mistakes can be reversed by another surgery or antidote to their medication but it should not have come down to that. That also costs extra to do this and the patient should not be at fault to have to pay these expenses. Ultimately I believe the facility should have to pay for any errors that costs extra procedures, medications, or hospitalization, or if the occurrence results in a death they should have to pay for funeral costs, etc. The hospital should have to pay because the mistakes are happening by their employees who are under their supervision and training. Now if the error occurred due to a very obvious, careless mistake by an employee then that employee should have to pay all costs.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) reported in 1999 that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die each year in the United States due to a preventable medical error. A report written by the National Quality Forum (NQF) found that over a decade after the IOM report the prevalence of medical errors remains very high (2010). In fact a study done by the Hearst Corporation found that the number of deaths due to medical error and post surgical infections has increased since the IOM first highlighted the problem and recommended actions to reduce the number of events (Dyess, 2009).
MacDonald, Ilene. "Hospital Medical Errors Now the Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S." FierceHealthcare. N.p., 20 Sept. 2013. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, which costs billions of dollars to the economy and increases our health care costs. How can health care managers decrease medical errors to improve costs of health care and costs to the economy? One approach is to have stricter health care polices, as it pertains to providing quality of care to patients no matter if the patient has private insurances, government insurance, self-pay, etc. the quality provided to patients should be the same across the board no matter the income class of patients, high quality of care should be our priority. The second approach would be to have stricter accountability for those that work in the health care field and make them responsible for their health care facilities and have penalties that are sanctioned for preventable medical errors.
The focus of health care is and has always been, practicing good hygiene, living a healthy lifestyle, and having a positive attitude reduces the chance of getting ill. Although there is not much prevention we can take for some of the diseases but we can certainly practice good hand hygiene to prevent infection and its ill effects. Research proves that hand washing is surely the most easy and effective way to prevent infection in health care. The question for this research: Is Hand washing an effective way to prevent infection in health care? It led to the conclusion that due to the high acuity, high patient: staff ratio, and lack of re evaluation certain units in the health care facilities cannot adhere to correct hand washing guidelines. Hand
“Failure to attend to hand hygiene has serious consequences: it has a negative effect on patient safety and the quality of patients’ lives, as well as on their confidence in healthcare delivery. However, the prevalence of hand hygiene omission is still high” (Canadian Disease Control, 2016 p 1). Washing hands before and after patient contact seems like a simple solution to prevent the spread of bacteria between patients. But it is not as simple as it seems.According to new CDC data, “approximately one in 25 patients acquires a health care-associated infection during their hospital care, adding up to about 722,000 infections a year. Of these, 75,000 patients die from their infections ( CDC, 2016 p 1).” Leaving a finacial burden on Canada’s health care
This essay critically examines the relationship between interventions and the dubious increase in hand hygiene compliance by healthcare professionals by using the framework of evidence-based practice to evaluate previous literature, identify barriers, and note mechanisms used to measure effectiveness of interventions. The systematic review, Interventions to improve hand hygiene compliance in patient care, conducted by the Cochrane Collaboration investigated innovations to improve hand hygiene compliance within patient care. The review included 2 original studies with an additional two new studies (Gould & Moralejo et al., 2010). Throughout the review, it was affirmed that while hand hygiene is an indispensable method in the prevention of hospital-acquired infections (HAI), the compliance among nurses’ is inadequate. Nurses are identified within the public as dependable and trustworthy in a time of vulnerability due to their specialised education and skills (Hughes, 2008).
It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).
It disclosed that more people die due to medical errors than traffic accidents or AIDs or breast cancer (as cited in IOM, 2000). It disclosed the high cost of healthcare, $17 to $29 billion, annually (as cited in IOM, 2000). The second report set the standard for making strong solid improvements in healthcare, nationally. It provided the steps for change (McKinney, 2011). Thus, it aimed to close the gap in health care. The report recommended a focus on six objectives. Health care must improve patient safety, effectiveness, patient-centered care, timely operations, efficiency of resources, and equitability of services (IOM,
Yet the system in which these talented people work falls short far too often. Our delivery system is fragmented, leaving patients in the care of multiple doctors, each sometimes unaware of how the other is treating the patient. Medical errors can occur as a patient moves from one care setting to another, or is prescribed different medications that interact. For too long, our current system focused on caring for the sick, doing little to keep people healthy in the first
Improving healthcare is a long, time-consuming process. The most important phase is knowing what the glitches are and then finding a small step to improve them. The only way to successfully change our health care system is small step by small step. A problem in today’s healthcare is that patient’s want and need their medical staff to hold value and accountability in their care but they don’t know the fine lines of what these requirements actually are. Porter (2010) defines value “as the health outcomes achieved per dollar spent” (p.2477). Patients need to be aware of this definition and they need to be deciding exactly how many of these health outcomes they are personally
“Researchers in London estimate that if everyone routinely washed their hands, a million deaths a year could be prevented” (“Hygiene Fast Facts”, 2013, p. 1). Hands are the number one mode of transmission of pathogens. Hands are also vital in patient interaction, and therefore should be kept clean to protect the safety of patients and the person caring for the patient. Hand hygiene is imperative to professional nursing practice because it prevents the spread of pathogens, decreases chances of hospital-acquired infections, and promotes patient safety. There is a substantial amount of evidence that shows why hand hygiene is important in healthcare
The health system is notorious for high costs and the serious quality problems. Alarming rate of medical care errors persist. In the past, health care has had preeminent concerns (Porter & Teisberg, 2006). The major concerns include diagnosis errors, preventable errors in treatment are common, best practices...
The health care is extremely important to society because without health care it would not be possible for individuals to remain healthy. The health care administers care, treats, and diagnoses millions of individual’s everyday from newborn to fatal illness patients. The health care consists of hospitals, outpatient care, doctors, employees, and nurses. Within the health care there are always changes occurring because of advance technology and without advance technology the health care would not be as successful as it is today. Technology has played a big role in the health care and will continue in the coming years with new methods and procedures of diagnosis and treatment to help safe lives of the American people. However, with plenty of advance technology the health care still manages to make an excessive amount of medical errors. Health care organizations face many issues and these issues have a negative impact on the health care system. There are different ways medical errors can occur within the health care. Medical errors are mistakes that are made by health care providers with no intention of harming patients. These errors rang from communication error, surgical error, manufacture error, diagnostic error, and wrong medication error. There are hundreds of thousands of patients that die every year due to medical error. With medical errors on the rise it has caused the United States to be the third leading cause of death. (Allen.M, 2013) Throughout the United States there are many issues the he...
There are multiple medical facilities whose workers have stated that their medical errors have reached to an alarming amount. The Institute of
This research paper discusses some of the health care administrators’ daily activities that that may turn hazardous to the resources. This has been done in view of a hospital as an example of healthcare facility. The main reason for this is that a hospital is a complex, bustling patient centre and an interdisciplinary workplace for various personnel; yet the responsibility of keeping it running lies with the hospital administrator.