Patient Safety

One of the primary goals in healthcare is patient safety. Goal one in The Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goals is to correctly identify the patient using two patient identifiers (The Joint Commission, 2017). For this reason, all healthcare facilities should have processes in place to prevent errors. Also recommended for patient safety is the use of the Universal Protocol to prevent wrong site, wrong procedure, and wrong patient surgery (The Joint Commission, 2017). Implementation of these two safety measures by Curative Health would help prevent potentially harmful errors in the future.

Safety needs is the second level of needs in the Maslow Hierarchy of needs. Nurses have to believe they are safe in order for their patients to feel and be safe. The nurse to patient ratio is another thing that the nurse manager or a leader should take into account and consideration. For this reason, it is important to understand the full scope of nursing practice other than the basic nursing tasks ‘nursing assessments, medication administration, dressing changes…’ “The nursing profession, including professional and specialty organizations, is responsible to its members and to the public to define the scope of practice and standards of practice” (American Nurses Association, 2017). Patients present with different diagnosis and needs which requires

It is our job as health care providers to prevent or abolish safety risks to the patient and to ourselves. Considering Ulrich and Kear (2014) show that four to eight million people are injured in the United States due to safety issues in the

Patient Safety is a primary goal in the healthcare industry. The increase in incidents of medication, diagnostic errors, falls, hospital acquired infections, pressure ulcers and poor communication exchanges, as well as nursing shortages, has attributed to the lack of patient safety. These incidents in safety have occurred in hospitals, primary care, and long term care facilities. Recent finding in patient safety issues indicate that most of these problems continue to exist. By decreasing the chance of further incidents through CQI methodologies, patients can have increase chances of higher quality of care, and healthier outcomes.

Safety is a basic human need. As defined by Dictionary.com, safety is “freedom from the occurrence of risk or injury, danger, or loss” (n.d.). In the healthcare environment, there are many challenges to keep patients safe. Studies have shown that many adverse events can cause real harm to patients and are preventable. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the prevalence of adverse events in the hospital setting, some causes of healthcare error, and ways to prevent the adverse events.

Patient safety has become a major concern in the healthcare sector because of the prevalence of medical errors. Patient safety has even stood out as its own ideal discipline and it encompasses certain areas of healthcare service provision such as reporting, analysis and prevention of medical errors (because of the upsurge of medical errors across the globe). Initially, medical errors were not considered a big issue in medical circles until there was an increased trend of medical errors across the globe which resulted into adverse medical events and a high number of patient deaths. This trend prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to carry out an assessment of the impact of medical errors across the globe and established that at least 1 in every 10 patient across the globe is normally affected by medical errors (World Health Organization 2008).

“Patient safety is a serious global public health issue. Estimates show that in developed countries as many as one in 10 patients are harmed while receiving hospital care” (World Health Organization, 2016). This is an important issue that all providers of healthcare are involved in reducing the incidence of these types of preventable errors. With the nurse having the majority of face to face contact with the patient, their input is essential to improved outcomes.

Patient safety must be the nurses’ number one priority in providing optimum patient care. Patient safety always starts with proper patient identification with two different identifiers like name, date of birth and hospital identification number (Perry, Potter, & Ostendorf, 2016, p.47). Proper patient and family education about safety can make patient care much easier.

Safety is important in the nursing field, not just for the resident but also for the care givers.

There is a major concern about patient safety; not only here in the United States, but in many countries around the world. Medical errors can happen to unfortunately anyone and clearly they happen all the time around the world. There has been quite a few studies done in order to pin point some of the risk factors of medical errors and some of them had unsettling conclusions.

Throughout any health-care facility, the incorporation and knowledge of patient safety is crucial to ensure quality care to patients. Patient safety is a discipline in the health care profession that emphasizes the reporting, analysis, and prevention of medical error and to minimize the incidence and impact of adverse healthcare events (Henriksen K, Battles JB, Keyes MA, year). Patient safety is incorporated within many issues throughout the healthcare field. One of these issues is health-care acquired infections. A health-care acquired infection, also called a nosocomial infection, is one that is obtained through any health-care facility (Heaven Stubblefield, year). The World Health Organization (WHO) states that in a recent study, in 55 hospitals of 14 countries representing 4 WHO Regions all over the world, showed an average of 8.7% of hospital patients had nosocomial infections. This means that at any time, over 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from infectious viruses acquired in a health-care facility (World Health Organization). There are many causes for theses infections as well as many preventative measures that can be implemented. Throughout this paper, one will decode the meaning of the chain of infection, causes, dangers and preventative measures of nosocomial infections.

Even though as a manager, initially I would like to talk with the patients involved to get their sides of the story then communicate with my team. A number of patient safety complaints has warranted managers to investigate the staff to why many issues have occurred of this magnitude and no one has followed up or attempted to decrease the number of incidences. Moving forward, managers have used all the responses they have obtained from the assessments during this process to prevent any further measures and reprimand anyone implicated, end result have found that the whole time the reports filed no one have witnessed these accidents and can attest to them ever occurring. Throughout this investigation many assessments have taking place to find out what was causing the medical errors to take place, on the other hand, with the objective of reducing as many occurrences as possible.

In the medical health simulation field, the safety word appears often in different conversation or article related to simulation. In other words, simulation centers provide a safe environment for learners to practice their skills whenever they encounter areal situation. As healthcare workers our goal focus on the patient safety. How often do you take time to think about your safety? Generally speaking, only in few occasion we think about our safety. Especially when you at work you believe you are safe environment. Today you will see the importance to be aware of your physical safety while working.

In the Australian health care industry, patient safety is the prevention of harm to patients (IOM, 2000). There are many clinical quality and safety issues in the health care industry. It is important to address these issues because health care is a tumultuous environment. An essential part of improving the safety and quality of care provided to patients is the gathering, analysis and use of information regarding clinical performance across the organisation and implementing quality improvement strategies.

Patient safety is an essential component of hospital environments that has generated international debates and received many interpretations. It involves practices that seek to reduce risks and unnecessary health-related medication errors to an acceptable minimum (Silva & Camerini, 2012). Nurses’ role in the medication process includes administering drugs. This role exposes them to the possibility of making errors that can potentially harm the patient, or even result in death. The research articles authored by Westbrook et al. (2011) entitled “Errors in the Administration of Intravenous Medications in Hospital and the Role of Correct Procedures and Nurse Experience” and Ding et al. (2015) titled “Incidence of Intravenous Medication Errors