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Patient safety in the hospital setting
Patient safety in the hospital setting
Patient safety in the hospital setting
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l. Quality Health Care Quality health care is the provision of effective and efficient health care that is free of errors or misjudgments. Quality health care puts the onus on medical practitioners to ensure that patients get the best comprehensive care possible in order to eliminate problematic situations. Over the years, reports have surfaced about discrepancies in the health care systems. Some of these errors have cost patients their well-being or more seriously, their lives. Cases involving medical malpractice, through negligence, are among the issues that compromise health care. Patients suffer adverse effects of omission or commission on the part of medical personnel and the results are sometimes very critical. Because of medical negligence, …show more content…
Risk management is the process of assessing potential dangers and taking a proactive approach to ensure patient safety at all costs (Sollecito and Johnson, 2013). The process involves detecting, reporting, analyzing and remedying situations that cause harm or distress to patients. All areas of a medical center or health care facility are included in the transformational process. Diagnosis, medical treatment and physical care of patients are among the most important areas that risk management addresses. Risk management perpetuates change in the overall quality of health care …show more content…
It takes into consideration previous faults, and devises methods of preventing repeats. Risk management formulates strategies, policies and protocols. Each member of the team is cognizant of the policies as well as his/her role in the execution of preventative measures. Documentation thus plays a pivotal role in the risk management scheme. Sollecito and Johnson,( 2013) suggest that qualitative research, in conjunction with a risk management regime, could assist in enhancing quality health care. Qualitative data is not remote from the patients or the situations, and proves useful in gathering specific information about all the areas that contribute to health care (Sollecito and Johnson, 2013). Qualitative data is obtainable from an examination of behavioral changes and patterns. Researchers document findings and use them for analysis and intervention. The recommendations and interventions then serve to improve the quality of health
Health Care workers are constantly faced with legal and ethical issues every day during the course of their work. It is important that the health care workers have a clear understanding of these legal and ethical issues that they will face (1). In the case study analysed key legal and ethical issues arise during the initial decision-making of the incident, when the second ambulance crew arrived, throughout the treatment and during the transfer of patient to the hospital. The ethical issues in this case can be described as what the paramedic believes is the right thing to do for the patient and the legal issues control what the law describes that the paramedic should do in this situation (2, 3). It is therefore important that paramedics also
It is imperative that Health Care Professionals learn to manage risk. There are many factors to think about including environment, assessment, identification and prioritising when managing risk. Being able to strategically implement preventative measures will help in managing risk. Risk management works hand in hand with all enablers set out by chapelhow.
Medical error occurs more than most people realize and when a doctor is found negligent the patient has the right to sue for compensation of their losses. Debates and issues arise when malpractice lawsuits are claimed. If a patient is filing for a medical malpractice case, the l...
Risk is the possibility of injuries or accidents occurring in your settings. Every individual health and social care settings has its own hazards which poses a potential risk. Risk assessment must be use to evaluate and minimise the risk if they are inseparable from the person centred care of the user. The risk factors in the care setting could have psychological, social, financial and physical instabilities.
The interpretation of quality health care varies with each person. Some place emphasis on the ability to access various treatments without interference. Others value the feature of being able to simply select one’s provider. Quality health care, according to the Institute of Medicine (2001), can be defined as care that is “safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable” (p. 3). Furthermore, it should account for, in detail, a patient’s medical history, and improve overall patient well-being.
The concept of risk management is relatively new, as hospitals look to prevent hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), falls, injuries, and other forms of preventable harm, rather than reacting once harm has already taken place. Before this concept became a best practice, most health organizations relied on malpractice and liability insurance to protect against losses and mitigate the effects of accidents and poor patient outcomes (Colorado State University-Global Campus, 2014). Today, risk management is an integral facet of a healthcare facility’s business practice in preventing risks, ensuring regulatory compliance, minimizing financial damage, and preserving its reputation in the community. Although most large
Kaiser Permanente entrusts the responsibility for the implementation and oversight of the Risk Management program to the Director of Accreditation and Resource Stewardship and the Department of Performance Improvement and Patient Safety. The Risk Management committee provides a multidisciplinary environment for analysis of risk to in regards to patient safety on identified risk for the purposes of improving patient care, and reducing morbidity and death. It reviews reports on occurrences whether they have caused any harm to near misses to sentinel events. The information on identified risks are distributed as it is received to the Senior Quality Council, chairmen of clinical departments, and appropriate administrative staff. It prioritizes patient safety and forms teams to analyze processes and develop action plans for
Quality care, safe practices and principles, and accountability constitute the foundation of any health care organization (Huber, 2014). Addressing patient safety issues and improving health care quality may include reorganizing operations to improve efficiency, coordinating care with interdisciplinary team members, and using information technologies (Wang, Cha, Sebek, McCullough, Parsons, Singer, & Shih, 2014). In this paper, I will review my organization’s quality program goals, objectives, and management structure, how quality improvement (QI) projects are selected, managed, and monitored, and how nursing staff are trained and supported in
The risk management plan is designed to provide safe treatment and monitoring of patients while in the facilities scope of care. Health care professionals are highly responsible to ensure that education is being provided to patients for future reduction of illness and injury. Managing the organizational risks within the facility along with the external risks within the community is the mission. Management within an emergency is unique in every way. All situati...
Patient safety is a top priority for every healthcare organization, but knowing where to direct patient safety can be a difficult task. To help guide organization in deciding where to focus their patient safety efforts, risk managers are hired by healthcare facilities to monitor and manage risk and liabilities. Nurses working in healthcare facilities keep their patients safe by risk management, according to studies. Interviews with RN revealed that nurses continually assess the clinical environment for possible risks of harm and use their knowledge of potential risks and knowledge of the patient to prevent harm. Successful risk management require nurses to recognize risks before they reach the patient, constantly prioritize the identified risks,
The purpose of quality initiatives is to promote safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable patient centered care( DeNisco & Barker, 2013). The quality improvement evaluation is important in the health care industry to find out the best practice care and to provide high quality cost effective care to patients. The public and private agencies are the regulatory entities in the health care Industry which promote quality and safety in the delivery of health care. The major regulatory agencies are CMS, the Joint commission, and AHRQ (deNisco & Barker, 2013).
Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency coordination task force with the help of government agencies. These government agencies are responsible for making health pol-icies regarding patient safety to which every HCO must follow (Schulman & Kim, 2000).
“Nursing is an art, and if it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or sculptor’s work...” (Nightingale, 1868)
Indeed, the in the health care the risk managers are trained to handle several issues in the multiple ways. Moreover, the risk mangers mainly deal with the a) financing b) health insurance c) claims management d) clinical management e) psychological health care f) human health care g) event and incident management h) Emergency alertness. Importantly, these are the issues that the risk managers in health care have to deal with but they may vary according to the individual organization requirements. Furthermore, the risk managers in health care mainly try to identify and reduce the effect of injuries to a) patients b) staff members c) visitors and work effectively to reduce the damages occurring during an event in the
In doing this, nurses are able to avoid legal litigations (Watson, 2014). According to the Nursing Service Organization (NSO) and the Continental National American Group (CNA), a simple process that nurses can implement in their daily care is risk management (2011). The first step of risk management is to assess the risks factors that may negatively affect the nurse’s clinical performance (NSO & CNA, 2011). An example of when a nurse can apply risk management is the medication process (Karavasiliadou & Atahanasakis, 2014). This is a pertinent issue because nurses are the last line of defense in the medication process and are considered the most responsible for the administration process (Karavasiliadou & Atahanasakis, 2014). Furthermore, nurses invest an average of 40% of their clinical time on medication alone (Karavasiliadou & Atahanasakis,