9th December is chosen as the day to commemorate World Patient Safety Day. This year on WPS Day, the focus is on spreading awareness about unsafe healthcare. As per the WHO Report, one in every 10 patients across the world get affected by unsafe healthcare practices. Therefore, on this day, the purpose is to show support and commitment towards solving and tackling these issues and to make patient safety a priority.
Patient safety day while the issue is prevalent in both developed as well as developing countries, let us make ourselves aware of patient safety. Here are 5 basic ways to ensure patient safety and care:
Hand Hygiene
Research shows that effective hand hygiene improves knowledge of when to clean and how to clean. Hospitals have to ensure that alcohol-based rub and gloves are available at the bedside, and guarantee that compliance is monitored continuously. The safety of a patient should be the at most priority. The last thing anyone wants is to lead way for infections to arise due to negligence.
Checklist
Make sure to double, triple check the check-ups and surgical rounds and procedure involved in the treatment process. There have been many cases where the patient has been admitted for an illness and is treated for something else. The most well-known surgical safety checklist is the one devised in 2008 by World Health Organisation (WHO), which cuts mortality rates from 1.5% to 0.8% at sites in industrialized nations and developing countries. The checklist also helped reduce the surgical complications rate from 11% to 7% over six months involving nearly 4,000 procedures. So as doctors, be extra wary of your patient’s medical safety.
Avoid abbreviations
Abbreviations although saves time and gets things done quickly, it can lead to a lot of confusion. Avoid using abbreviations. About 15,000 medication errors a year have been linked to using abbreviations such as “u” for “unit” and “o.d.” instead of “once daily.” So don’t let something as small as mixing up of name result in the loss of a life. Implementation of computerized physician order entry systems also can help eliminate the vestiges of this problem.
Rapid Response System
You need to build teams in such a way that they will work together in ensuring to implement team strategies and tools to enhance performance and patient safety. Effective team communication and materials can be tailored to any health care setting, from emergency departments to ambulatory clinics. This will ensure quick response to deal with a crisis.
Promote reporting
There is an increase in the amount of public interest with regards to patient safety. If there has been a case of mishap, it needs to be reported no matter what. This can be the only way to learn from mistakes and prevent recurrence. Such incidences should be well defined and easy to access. This will ensure that the National and state will learn and work more efficiently and carefully for patient safety.
The information included at this site is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for medical treatment by a health care professional. Because of unique individual needs, the reader should consult their physician to determine the appropriateness of the information for the reader’s situation.
We often see people struggling to adapt to poor design. This graphic, based on LMQ human factors model, helps to explain what this means.
The red circle contains those actions or omissions that impact performance. These actions impact on practice.
The outer circle contains factors that influence care (for better or worse). The patient sits at the centre and may be harmed by the system designed to benefit them. Yet there are ways to manage or mitigate these factors through interventions.
Each year, nearly 444,000 individuals die due to avoidable hospital errors. Fortunately, care providers, support staff, and consumers acting in unison can improve patient safety outcomes.
Through safety focused team initiatives, organizations can improve team performance. Patient safety involves avoiding errors, limiting harm, and reducing the likeliness of mistakes through planning that fosters communication, lowers infection rates, and reduces errors.
Care providers, patients, and support staff share the same goal; the best possible treatment outcome. The following seven principles outline tips that some health organizations implement to achieve this goal.
Tip 1: Establish a Safety and Health Management System
The Assessment Tool for Hospitals, published by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), suggests that care providers should formulate guidelines that determine enterprise safety and health management system performance. [1] To encourage compliance with safety protocols, it is important that administrators include all managers and employees in appropriate decision-making processes and perform regular organizational performance reviews. Regular reviews provide a dynamic indicator of whether an organization has achieved intended outcomes. Furthermore, administrators can use this information to adjust organizational policies as needed.
Tip 2: Build a Rapid Response System
To aid organizations in planning rapid response systems (RRSs), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed TeamSTEPPS™, or Team Strategies & Tools to Enhance Performance & Patient Safety. [2] Rapid response teams (RRTs) comprise one vital part of an RRS. The AHRQ suggests that health organizations determine the overall RRS framework using STEP Assessment:
Status of the patient Team members Environment
Progress toward goal
TeamSTEPPS™ also outlines appropriate decision-making models for varying scenarios, such as Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (FMEA), Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), and Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
Tip 3: Make Sure That Employees Know and Understand Safety Policies
Employees and employers must understand their roles in organizational safety. [1] In addition to training each new employee about hospital safety, administrators should update staff members regularly about related policy changes. Additionally, employees must understand the duties involved with upholding patient safety. Furthermore, every medical organization should clearly outline safety policies and procedures.
Employees must feel safe to voice concerns. Therefore, along with a clearly outlined procedure for managing and reporting issues, effective safety training includes reassurance that administrators will receive information with impartiality.
Tip 4: Develop a Safety Compliance Plan
Hospital administrators continually monitor and evaluate how employees follow established policies. Institutional governing boards and boards of directors use this information to adjust organizational policies as needed. [3] Compliance programs benefit health organizations in many ways, including but not limited to:
● Building community trust as a responsible organization ● Developing compliance standards suitable for the community and organization ● Establishing a framework to evaluate employee and vendor compliance ● Maintaining insurance claim integrity ● Mitigating or eliminating illegal activity ● Promoting positive treatment outcomes
● Providing a centralized compliance outlet
By developing and maintaining a safety compliance plan, organizations—small and large—promote safe treatment environments.
Tip 5: Practice Patient-Centered Care
Patient-centered care is a hot topic among debates about service quality. [4] Health administrators, hospital media communication, and legislators use the catch phrase often. In fact, insurers linked payouts, in part, to the degree that care facilities adopted patient-centered care well before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
In the past, health advocates worried that the philosophy might undermine efforts to provide evidence-based treatments. Today, however, evidence-based treatment supporters view patient-centered care as a critical framework for establishing and promoting desired wellness outcomes.
Tip 6: Communicate Safety Information to Patients
Historically, consumers played a passive role in their recoveries and, with vague comprehension, followed treatment plans unquestioningly. [5] In this environment, patients placed absolute trust in care providers. Today, however, practitioners understand that educated patients can assist in reducing medical errors. Additionally, with the wealth of information available online, it is important that patients understand what health-related facts apply to their unique circumstances.
Contemporary patients increasingly participate in their own recovery planning. As educated consumers, they receive safer treatment, because care providers and health advocates have empowered them with the ability to ask the right questions and notice potential problems.
Tip 7: Incorporate Safe Hospital Design
Traditional hospital design focused on operational efficiency rather than patient safety, designating interconnected work areas in close proximity. [6] However, patient-centered building design includes structural characteristics such as air quality, critical information proximity, noise dampening, and standardized feature locations, as well as fixtures that reduce contagion spread, such as employee hand sinks, in all treatment areas. Additionally, engineers design modern hospitals with wiring that supports advanced technology that reduces errors, with extra emphasis placed on areas designated as drug dispensaries. Most importantly, safe building designs incorporate planning to measure and benchmark facility conditions and characteristics, such as ease of information access, noise levels, scalability, and other factors.
Patients, employees, and administrators can eliminate most hospital errors by working as a team. However, it takes planning, commitment and work to maintain a safe hospital environment.
Learn More
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Recommended Readings
Improving Patient Care through Clinical Integration
Improving Patient Safety
Making Predictive Analytics a Routine Part of Patient Care in Hospitals
Sources:
[1] Occupational Safety and Health Administration
[2] Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
[3] Office of the Inspector General
[4] US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health
[5] National Center for Biotechnology Information
[6] Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality – Creating a Culture of Patient Safety