Patient Safety Essay

In accordance with the World Health Organisation (WHO 2008) checklist and Local trust policies, a team briefing was held before the day’s list started. The checklist is part of a second Global Patient Safety Challenge initiative entitled ‘Safe Surgery Saves Lives’, aimed at reducing the number of surgical deaths worldwide and was launched in June 2008. This not

Issue: As currently the awareness that has been arising on the approach of in-house endoscope repairing, I have conducted a series analysis based on varies aspects of the existing and potential issues, the problem statement is presented below:

The OR is naturally a high risk environment, surgery naturally exposes staff to patient blood and body fluids, involves the handling of sharp instruments, and the close interactions of the surgical team within a limited amount of space (Jagger et al., 2011). Operations involve the types of sharps; trocars, some surgical instruments, saws, drills, reamers, and some suture needles and scalpel blades that may not easily be replaced with Safety Engineered Devices (SED’s) (Guest, Kable, & McLeod, 2010). The majority of sharps injuries within the OR result from handling sharps, such as needles, blades and sharp instruments hand-to-hand (Jagger et al., 2011).

The cost of Medical equipment plays a significant role in the delivery of health care. The clinical engineering at Victoria Hospital is an important branch of the hospital team management that are working to strategies ways to improve quality of service and lower cost repairs of equipments. The team members from Biomedical and maintenance engineering’s roles are to ensure utilization of quality equipments such as endoscope and minimize length of repair time. All these issues are a major influence in the hospital’s project cost. For example, Victory hospital, which is located in Canada, is in the process of evaluating different options to decrease cost of its endoscope repair. This equipment is use in the endoscopy department for

All equipment must be cleaned in between patients if it is re-usable and not for single use. There are three levels of risk High, intermediate and low, and three ways to decontaminate Cleaning, Sterilisation, and Disinfection.

Has anyone ever considered how medical devices are prepared before a surgical procedure? Central Sterile Processing Department (CSPD) consists of services within the Hospital, in which reusable medical devices will be cleaned, prepared, and processed. The role for CSPD is to prevent infection transmitted by usage of medical devices. The procedure for hospital medical devices before surgery has a four part workflow process in: Decontamination, to Instrumentation, to Sterilization and Sterile Storage (Case Carts). An example is given for reprocessing an Intestinal Set and the supplies needed for the preparation of this medical device set.

Improperly sterilized instruments used in surgical procedures can introduce bacteria into a patient, which then sets up the risk for infection. Central service technicians are a part of the team of professionals dedicated to preventing such infections. Certification demonstrates a commitment to patient safety and quality of care from healthcare facilities. (p. 36)

The following are the National Patient Safety Goals for 2016: improve the accuracy of patient identification, improve the effectiveness of communication of caregivers, improve the safety of using medications, reduce the harm associated with clinical alarm systems, reduce the risk of health care- associated infections, and for the hospital to identify safety risks inherent in its patient population (Hudson 2016 page 2). Under each category there are specific goals, such

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

Surgical Technologists have an important role in the operation room (OR). There are different positions within the Surgical Technology field, including Scrub Surgical Technologist, Circulating Surgical Technologist, and Second Assisting Technologist. Scrub Surgical Technologists have a number of tasks, including prepping the patient for surgery, sterilizing the OR, gown and glove surgeons and assistants, and assists the surgeon and other surgical team members in a number of ways, such as passing instruments and dressing wounds. Circulating Surgical Technologists have a number of tasks as well, including checking patient’s charts, identifying patient and verifying the surgery that will be performed with consent forms, assisting anesthesia

"The final count is correct" is a statement that operating room (OR) nurses use on a daily basis. Their belief in the count being correct does not change the facts. The incident of a retained surgical item (RSI) was the most frequently reported sentinel event from 2010 through 2012 and again in 2014 (The Joint Commission [TJC], 2012, 2014). Counting of surgical items is necessary to ensure maximum protection and safety of the patient. One of the most important aspects of the OR nurse 's job is the final count of items used in a surgical procedure. Risk factors for RSIs are greater with different situations and known barriers frequently lead to a more difficult count. The damage potential of a RSI can be as great as death of the patient.

At least half a million deaths per year could be prevented with effective implementation of systemic improvements in operating rooms. Specifically, multiple studies have found implementing the use of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist would significantly reduce surgical morbidity and mortality due to surgical errors.

Wrong site, wrong procedure, and wrong patient errors are avoidable safety issues. Nearly 1.9 trillion dollars are spent on medical errors each year in the United States (Catalano & Fickenscher, 2008). Between 1995 and 2007, 691 wrong-site surgeries have been reported to The Joint Commission's Sentinel Event data repository (AHC Media LLC, 2008). In 2003 in response to the outcry for better patient safety The Joint Commission

Thesis: My goal is to inform my audience the importance of counting the instruments and sterile supplies for Surgical Procedures.

“The Process Improvement in Stanford Hospital’s Operating Room” case has many issues when it comes to regards to its existing instrument provisioning process taking place within the Operating Room (OR) of Stanford’s Hospital. This process entails getting instruments ready for a surgery in the OR and the cleansing of these instruments afterwards; however, there are many problems that arise in this process.