Summary: Improving Patient Safety

724 Words2 Pages

“Leaders are essential to developing a safety environment, but all healthcare staff are responsible to practice safety” (Paradiso,2018). In a hospital setting there are many things that could go wrong if the healthcare workers are not vigilant or continuously double checking for any possible errors. Errors can happen in many places of the hospital, and it ranges from medication errors, surgical errors, contamination errors, falls, ulcers, etc. These are events that should never happen, but due to human errors and other causes we have an increased number of hospital “Never Events”. Never events are list of serious medical errors and adverse effects that should never happen to a patient in the hospital. In Pediatrics it is very important to …show more content…

Since being at CHOP for clinical I have noticed many safety precautions put in place for the safety of the children they care for. I had the pleasure of being in the Ga procedures room and I got to watch many bone marrow aspiration and biopsies get performed. A form of safety that stuck out to me was the surgical time out that they did before every procedure on the children. They stated the name of the kid, the site, what procedure was being done, and if informed consent was signed by the parent. I think this is a wonderful way to promote safety because it minimizes the number of errors that could possibly go wrong during a surgical procedure. While I was there I also noticed a nurse remind the surgeon about performing the time out before beginning the surgery. This showed that patient safety is a team effort and should be the responsibility of everyone. Another way I have noticed safety being performed at CHOP is when they scrub the hub of the IV lines. They perform the scrub for a full 15 seconds and if for any reason they made a mistake or dropped the cap they have to start all over again. This is very important because it reduces/prevents contamination and possible infection of the patient; This also eliminates the cost that would have to be paid by the hospital if the child acquired a catheter related infection while in the

Open Document