Patient Center Care: A Case Study

In healthcare systems, there is a concept of fair and just culture. That concept is important to manage the risk. In any organization, errors can happen. But, the best first tool to understand the error is to report it when it happens. Reporting error in healthcare contributes to minimize the risk of recurring.

Healthcare workers are not the only ones fearful of exposing medical errors. The medical institutes themselves operate behind a wall of silence. The IOM first recommended a national medical error reporting system in 1999 and despite attempts by then President Clinton, the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association successfully lobbied against it (Dyess, 2009). As of 2009, only 20 states have a mandatory medical error reporting system and only a fraction of estimated

Hospitals and Ambulatory Care 1) The traditional management style of hospitals have been hierarchical and internally focused. What are the three important challenges that hospitals face to accommodate new payers and consumer expectations?

Discussion Sharing information about the patient’s health status helps to create continuity of care between the medical staff and family members involved in the patients care. As stated in the textbook Leddy & Pepper 's Conceptual Bases of Professional Nursing (2014), “Patient-centered care was created in efforts to improve quality and safety in nursing and healthcare emphasizing the importance of patient-centered care, during which nurses use a holistic care approach considering each patient’s personal preferences, values, family situations, religious and cultural traditions, and specific life- style”

Background 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).

A corrective plan is designed below to be effective in all departments. · Awareness should be built among the doctors and nurses on the risks of medical errors owing to miscommunications. This can be done by periodically doing policy review sessions on patient safety.

One of the recommendations for healthcare organizations to employ in an effort to reduce the number of errors is to advocate for voluntary error reporting nationally while conducting research and developing tools for patient safety. This way, information about errors can be gathered and prevented from reoccurring at health care sites and by health care providers. Voluntary error reporting will act as a warning of potential or actual errors and suggest ways to avoid them in the future.

“Errors in communication give rise to substantial clinical morbidity and mortality (Riesenberg, Leitzsch, & Cunningham, 2010).” As a result, the Joint Commission has identified effective communication as one of its National Patient Safety Goals (Dunsford, 2009).

II. Medical Errors: Non-Disclosure and Disclosure Disclosing medical errors is considered necessary by patients and practitioners. They are advised to disclose in the form of an apology when necessary and appropriate. When a medical error causes damage to the patient, it seen as not acceptable because a patient goes for treatment in order to get better not to get worse therefore it calls for the situation to be addressed. When a medical error is not disclosed, the fellow peers who have witnessed the error must decide whether they should remain silent and keep the error to themselves or reveal the error to the higher up, although it would be in good faith to report the medical error to a higher up, unless it has caused harm or long-term damage to the patient. (Youngson. p. 69) There are many hospitals that the practitioners keep the errors made to themselves and do not disclose the medical errors to the families of patients or the patients themselves. Medical errors become a topic of conversation if the family of a patient or the patient themselves become aware about the error. Medical errors are something that should be disclosed in a good faith manner

The concern with not educating trainees before graduation is that incident and near misses tend to remain underreported because of the perpetuating negative culture surrounding error reporting. This in turn hinders learning from the event and stifles growth toward voluntary sharing of broken processes and system failures (Barnsteiner, 2011). The current focus on Quality Improvement is to provide high reliable care with little to zero risks by including the “combined and unceasing efforts of everyone—healthcare professionals, patients and their families, researchers, payers, planners and educators—to make changes that will lead to better patient outcomes (health), better system performance (care) and better professional development” (IHI, 2015).

Reporting errors can strengthen the processes of care and also enhance the quality of care. To effectively avoid further errors that can cause harm to patients, improvements must be made on the incidents or events reported in reporting system. Reporting errors can help the organizations better understand what happened, identify the factors that cause the occurrence of errors or incidents, determine its frequency and predict whether it could happen again and find an intervention to prevent or to

Patient centered care is defined as “the practice of caring for patients (and their families) in ways that are meaningful and valuable to the individual patient, which includes listening to, informing and involving patients in their care” (Grenier and Knebel, 2003). Five challenges presented in patient centered care are patient obstacles, physician and practice obstacles, facility obstacles, community obstacles, and health literacy.

One of the biggest threats to achieving patient-centered care in the workplace is each employee believing it’s up to someone else. The front desk staff thinks it’s the responsibility of the floor nurses. The floor nurses think it’s the responsibility of the physicians. It’s an age-old game of “pass the buck.” However, for patient-centered care to be successful, everyone must take full responsibility. From treating patients with courtesy and respect to making sure all needs are met prior to discharge, everyone plays a crucial part. Your primary role is to make sure they understand

Organizational Responsibility & Current Health Care Issues HCS - 545 11/19/2012 Organizational Responsibility & Current Health Care Issues In today's modern world with plenty of technology, it is hard to believe that we cannot figure out how to reduce Medical errors. The issue of medical error is not new in health care organizations. It has been in spot light since 1990's, when government did research on sudden increase in number of death in the hospitals. According to Lester, H., & Tritter, J. (2001), "Medical error is an actual or potential serious lapse in the standard of care provided to a patient, or harm caused to a patient through the performance of a health service or health care professional." Medical errors