In Medical Checklists Waste Time and Money, Max Rebarb calls medical professionals to stop using checklists in their workplaces. He considers the use of checklists to be unnecessary, costly, time consuming and ultimately a burden on health care systems. Flaws in the author’s statements includes: failing to remember that health care professionals aren’t perfect, forgetting that following lists can be time and cost effective, and disregarding the main goal of healthcare. As in many professions, checklists can actually be extremely valuable assets to a healthcare team.
While it is true that healthcare professionals are well-trained individuals, they are also finite humans. The author assumes that people trained in healthcare should never struggle with the natural forgetfulness that plagues humans. Checklists are used in many professions to ensure that employees cover every aspect of their job. This ensures quality results and minimal mistakes. Greg Kenyon, MD, has found checklists to be very valuable within his family medicine practice. Checklists allow his business to keep mistakes to a
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minimum and allow documentation to be a simpler task. He acknowledges that simple mistakes easily happen and can be detrimental. People, well trained or not, will occasionally make mistakes. In healthcare a mistake could mean life or death. Checklists are one tool that healthcare providers can use to ensure that potentially fatal mistakes occur less often. Similar to mistakes, the wasting of time and money in healthcare is no laughing matter.
The author clearly understood this when he stated that checklists are wasteful. Health care professionals do have to pause in their schedules and review a checklist. This takes time. More time completing a task means more money is spent. The author fails to go further in his argument. Consider a situation where two nurses are required to perform physicals on their clients. The first nurse uses a detailed checklist as a roadmap of the extensive task before her. The other nurse simply attempts to remember each task as she goes. The first nurse will not have to waste time remembering each task and will be able to document her findings quickly using the checklist as a guide. This is just one example of many that opposes the author’s viewpoint and conversely promotes the efficiency of
checklists. The author creates an image of a healthcare system whose main concern is finances. What happened to the idea that healthcare is primarily about client-centered care? The author completely bypasses this aspect. A client’s health and wellbeing should be placed at the forefront. Simply focusing on time and finances turns healthcare into a cold and impersonal business. Clients within the healthcare system are more than just proverbial cars at the mechanic. Acknowledging this explains why surgeons will use a checklist to perform complex procedures. Using checklists might occasionally cost more, but if it results in better client care, then it is worth it. Max Rebarb raises some valuable concerns in his article, but he forgets that there are numerous beneficial aspects to the use of medical checklists. Checklists are tools that assist imperfect healthcare workers perform more flawless jobs. If used properly checklists can actually be time and cost effective. Checklists allow healthcare workers to better meet and protect their client’s needs, something which Rebarb failed to remember.
Kohn, L. et al. 2000. To err is human: building a safer health system. Washington D.C. National Academies Press.
Nothing is perfect in the world of clinical systems implementation, so a Chief Informatics Officer is always on the go. He travels around the country to attend meetings in order to figure out how to best balance compliance, security, ease of use, automation of manual processes, and safety in electronic medical records systems and other hospital software systems. Clinicians have constantly evolving needs and often come to the Chief Informatics Officer with a clear idea of the problem they want to solve, but no idea of how to solve it. Reliably the pen records lessons from the meetings and concerns of clinicians as it travels with him. It crafts written reports to advise senior management on how to face the endless stream of projects, so that those which can accomplish the greatest good for the most people over the longest time period can be
New and very expensive technologies comes up in health care every day. As patients need health care services ranging from emergent care to preventive and elective procedures in a daily basis, there is a high job security in a health care field. Working in a health care field requires people skills (personality characteristics that enhance our ability to interact effectively with other people) and technical competence. Health care workers are a part of the nation’s fastest growing industry. Unlike working in grocery or retail stores, health care workers need to be aware of what is going on in the industry.
Kohn, L., Corrigan, J., & Donaldson, M. (1999). To err is human: building a safer health system. Committee on Quality of Health Care in America Institute of Medicine National Academy Press Washington, D.C.
According to Poorolajal, medical errors occur when health care providers choose inappropriate methods of care or improperly execute an appropriate method of care (Poorolajal, et al. para 5 -10), which could potentially lead to loss of life and severe or permanent trauma to the victim. Valiani et al. argues, “Committing an error is part of the human nature” (540). Valiani et al. insist that no health care practitioner is immune to committing an error event if they demonstrate mastery of their skills (540). However, error in health care systems is dependent on many causes and factors. Management of such factors is essential to reducing the occurrence of errors in a health care system. Therefore, what strategies can medical practitioners implement to reduce medical errors? Medical practitioners can implement strategies such as communication, verification, and eliminating extended work shifts. These strategies are most effective because they help medical providers fulfill their full potential in doing their job in the most effective
Many hospitals have systems of checks and balances to avoid errors, but what happens when the systems do not work? Today in the United States, medical errors are the fifth-leading cause of death. In 2000, the Institute of Medicine released a study, “To Err is Human”, revealing an estimated 98,000 deaths annually from medical errors. While this figure is assumed to be lower than the actual, each death comes with an inherent cost to the health care system. In today’s terms this figure is underestimated, however the accompanied cost is estimated to be between $17 billion and $29 billion annually. According to Grober and Bohnen (2005), “Medical error can be defined as, “an act of omission or commission in planning or execution that contributes
The PICOT model creates a template for clinicians that allow them to break down clinical questions related to a specific population. With this model, clinicians find information via online databases and journals to gather accurate data. Often, health care providers have the capacity and interest in formulating a question, however they lack research strategy (Riva, Malik, Burnie, Endicott & Busse, 2012). The PICOT model helps bridge the gap between questions and answers. A concern of mine in health care deals with mistakes made in the operating room. The proposed research question is “Does the implementation of the World Health Organization’s Surgical Safety Checklist, in its entirety, reduce the rate of surgical mistakes and increase positive results compared to surgeries that do not follow all aspects of the surgical safety checklist; especially in lower income countries or emergency surgery situations where time is not
this will cause healthcare providers with the training and education needed for clinical documentation improvements to be installed effectively. It is important that having a specialized team who can create solutions towards Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) in order to minimize the failures that may occur. In this case, investing in training for the materials/tools necessary for healthcare providers to excel in their work with CDI. Essentially, Clinical Documentation is used throughout the healthcare system for the analysis of care, communication, and medical records. This is important because the information of medical records that healthcare providers are able to access, will help patients track their health conditions. Thus, clinical documentation improvement has a direct impact on patients by providing quality information. On the other hand, the new technological advancements will also be able to address the efficiencies in health care system that differ from paper-based charting. Improving on the quality of information will also have the effect upon the ethical and effectiveness of care that is being provided. This has a significant impact in order to maintain patient care that ensures the documentation is accurate, timely, and reflect within the services provided. Documentation assessments can be utilized so there can be improvements on the education for healthcare providers as they intend implementation standards take effect immediately. In this case, failures must be analyzed so that they will have the ability to comprehend and determine an organization’s strengths and weaknesses
Each year this panel of experts put a microscope on patient safety across the board. They decide where upmost attention needs to be paid. Sometimes items leave the list because there are been strides take to improve in that area and sometimes it continues to stay on the list because they believe the relevance and importance is growing. Healthcare is evolving b...
Also, these studies question those who are effected; in this case, those who are most effected, is everyone. Doctors and nurses spend the most time working within these systems, but the information that is put into these systems effects every individual in America, because it is their information. Because nurses are often considered “both coordinators and providers of patient care” and they “attend to the whole patient,” their opinion is highly regarded (Otieno, Toyama, Asonuma, Kanai-Pak, & Naitoh, 2007, p. 210). It is clear that the use of these new systems is much debated, and many people have their own, individualized opinion. This information suggests that when there is a problem in the medical field, those who address it attempt to gather opinions from everyone who is involved before proceeding. It has been proven by multiple studies that this system of record keeping does in fact have potential to significantly improve patient health through efficiency, and it is because of this that the majority of hospitals have already completed, or begun the transfer from paperless to electronic (Otieno, Toyama, Asonuma, Kanai-Pak, & Naitoh,
As Mr. Rosen is waiting for the doctor to come evaluate him, I hand him a packet that has the medical office policy and procedures for the facility.
In my hometown, Chongqing, one of China’s four direct-controlled municipalities, the government put forward a slogan in 2008 that is Five-Chongqing: Livable Chongqing[ Livable Chongqing: Improving the living conditions and environment of people.], Unblocked Chongqing[ Unblocked Chongqing: Improving the traffic conditions. No traffic jam in corn city and the country has oil road. ], Forest Chongqing[ Forest Chongqing: By planting more trees to improve the environmental conditions.], Safe Chongqing[ Safe Chongqing: By strengthening security patrols to enhance people's security.] and Healthy Chongqing[ Healthy Chongqing: Improving the health care system.]. Some people claim that it is a policy which costs too much money and we may earn little
Things such as doctors getting enough sleep can make a huge difference in the decision making process. Hospital put doctors on 24 hour call, depriving them of the sleep they need in order to make a sound choice. Imagine if you did not sleep all night and had a huge test in the morning. How well would you perform under very minimal sleep? Another precaution is to make a checklist. In a lot of profession they make checklist in order to ensure that everything is done and done correctly and doctors are finally catching on to the trend. Another they are making an effort to minimize mistakes is by asking questions more than once. Asking things like “what is your birthday” and “what medicine are you allergic too” can help doctors remember
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...
In our society, it is not rare to hear people die suddenly without signs of serious illness preceding the death. A critical examination might show that such individuals were suffering from serious health condition that they and their family were not aware of. These critical health issues are often diagnosed during regular medical checkups.