Patient Safety

As health care has advanced through the years, many roles have changed which includes those of risk management and patient safety. Once thought to be one in the same,but they have distinct and obvious differences that set each apart from the other. Risk management is defined very broadly by the United States Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services as "any activities,process, or policy to reduce liability exposure"(https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-01-03-00050.pdf).This is much different from the definition of patient safety as found in the book Advances in Patient Safety: New Directions and Alternative Approaches as "Patient safety is a discipline in the health care sector that applies safety science methods

An error is one of the vital parts of human life. Hospitals are areas with very chaotic systems and as health care is growing more steadily, it is becoming complex in nature and more sophisticated technologically. Therefore, medical errors are bound to happen. Administrators, physicians, and nurses, are advocates of patient safety and safety is one of the highest priorities during the provision of care. A report from Institute of Medicine (IOM) claims that between 44,000 and 98,000 die annually due to medical errors (Alexander, Cheryl Ann 2014). Medication errors can lead to adverse outcomes such as increased mortality, extended period of hospitalization, and amplified medical expenses. Although the health care team can cause medication errors, nursing medication errors are the most common. Moreover the workload of the nurses combined with more prescription

Nurses are responsible for multiple patients on any given day making medication errors a potential problem in the nursing field. Medication administration not only encompasses passing medication to the patients yet begins with the physician prescribing the medication, pharmacy filling the correct prescription and ending with the nurse administering and monitoring the patient for any adverse effect from the medication. According to the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCCMERP), ‘A medication error refers to any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the healthcare professional,

This paper will discuss the National Patient Safety Goal NPSG 0.7.06.01 entitled “ Use proven guidelines to prevent infection of the urinary tract that are caused by catheter” (The Joint Commission, 2015). It will identify reasons why this National Patient Safety Goal was chosen as well as the type of organizations that utilize urinary catheters. It will look into the cost of implementing an educational process compared with the hospital cost of Catheter-Associated Urinary Infections (CAUTI). The Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) will demonstrate a method on how to gather data, design educational tool, implement standard practice and create a committee by collaborating with other health care disciplines. The effectiveness of the educational process will be evaluated through data collection and analysis. Finally, future health care delivery implications will be explored.

This paper, will discuss the National Patient Safety Goal NPSG 0.7.06.01 entitled “ Use proven guidelines to prevent infection of the urinary tract that are caused by catheter” (The Joint Commission, 2015). It will identify reasons why this National Patient Safety Goal was chosen as well as the type of organizations that utilize urinary catheters. It will look into financial implications of implementing educational process versus the hospital cost of Catheter-Associated Urinary Infections (CAUTI). The Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) will demonstrate method on how to gather data, design educational tool, implement standard practice and create a committee by collaborating with other health care discipline. Effectiveness of the educational process will be evaluated through data collection. Finally, future health care delivery implications will be explored.

The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority is a state agency founded by the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) on 2002. Moreover, the agency creates the greatest database system for patient safety which known as Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System PA-PSRS. The system was developed by contract with Pennsylvania-based independent, ECRI, in partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a non-profit health services research agency, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), a Pennsylvania-based, non-profit health research organization and also a leading international information technology firm. Statewide compulsory for using PA-PSRS to report serious events in hospital, ambulatory surgical facilities and

It is a great opportunity to have this experience and to relate it with what we were being taught at school. There are a lot of connections in this project regarding patient safety. My safety project is a qualitative analysis of the difference between an allergy and sensitivity. The question still lies on how could the hospital staff manage allergy better?

In our nursing practice, the nurse is required to hold essential skills of clinical judgment and be a patient advocate to ensure the safety and the well-being of the patient we care for. Patient safety can be compromised if nurses are not able to identify potential issues thru assessment of the patient's sign and symptoms. Patient safety can also be compromised if nurses are afraid to speak up for our patient and question what we think or feel are unsafe acts or orders.

Two words any nurse dreads to hear is ‘medication error’, knowing that potential harm has been or could have been caused to a patient from a simple mistake. The Texas Board of Nursing (TBON, n.d.) describes medication errors as an “inappropriately prescribed, dispensed, or administered” medication causing a circumstances or events that have the ability to cause harm (Position Statement 15.17). Director of medical and surgical unit, R. Crowdis, stated each healthcare institute have their own policies in place to prevent medication errors and reporting any medication errors that occur (Personal Communication, June 11, 2016). Upon reviewing current hospital policies, the interview focused on prevention methods of medication errors, how to encourage

It is evident that patient safety is one of the most important principal in place as a nurse. To insure this there are many standards that are set in place that as a registered nurse need to be met, some including, professional responsibility and accountability, having knowledge based practice, ethical practice, service to the public and self-regulation (SRNA, 2014). “These standards and foundation competencies serve as the criteria against which all registered nurses, practising in all domains of nursing practice (direct care, education, administration, and research, and the evolving domain of policy) will be measured by clients, employers, colleagues and themselves”(SRNA, 2014). Having these standards allows register nurses and the public to have a clear understanding of what needs to be met in order to insure that there is proper patient safety. However there are still many issues that contribute to unacceptable patient safety, including medication administration errors, post operative care, and patients mental health. However, “medication errors are one of the most common types of medical errors that occur in healthcare institutions” (J.Choo, 2010). A medication error, according to The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention “is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient or

This following article will look at two articles and focus on aspects of safety medication administration in nursing practice by the staff nurses. This area is interesting because the previous report showed approximately 5.6% of Non-intravenous doses administered to adult hospital patients, and it has been estimated that 0.6-1.2% of medication administration errors may led to severe harm even dearth (Mcleod et al, 2013). Leape et al (1995) indicated that nurses were responsibility for 86% of all medication error interception, regardless of the original errors. The nurses play the important role to identify the causes of medication errors and prevent medication administration errors in nursing practice in order to provide safe care toward the service users (Henneman et al, 2010). The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA 2004) clarify that all the clinical, cost effective and safe use of medicines to ensure patients get the maximum benefit from the medicine they need and the same time minimizing the potential harm. This article will be critiqued on the different types of evidence which explored safety medication administration in the nursing practice toward service user. Using evidence is important in nursing practice because it can helps nurses in addressing questions related to best possible care and improve patients’ outcome.It is embedded with code the nurses are expected to use best possible evidence in the nursing practice in order to provide the

Reviewing the common errors and issues nurses are faced with can help reduce the amount of overall medication errors made. A study in a Swedish hospital revealed great insights about what exactly goes wrong during medication administration by registered nurses. The study was conducted in a 1000 bed university hospital; samples were taken from three separate units. “For the purposes of this study, MA accuracy was defined as a medication dose administered exactly as ordered by the doctor.” (Gunningberg, Poder, Donaldson, &, Swenne, 2014)

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).

Medication error is one of the biggest problems in the healthcare field. Patients are dying due to wrong drug or dosage. Medication error is any preventable incident that leads to inappropriate medication use or harms the patient while the medication is in the control of the health care professional,or patient (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2015). It is estimated about 44,000 inpatients die each year in the United States due to medication errors which were indeed preventable (Mahmood, Chaudhury, Gaumont & Rust, 2012). There are many factors that contribute to medication error. However, the most common that factors are human factors, right patient information, miscommunication of abbreviations, wrong dosage. Healthcare providers do not intend to make medication errors, but they happen anyways. Therefore, nursing should play a tremendous role to reduce medication error

Anyone working in the medical field should have one main common priority and that is patient safety. Patient safety is defined by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) as “the prevention of harm to patients.” Unfortunately, errors in health care are inevitable, but it is important to learn from those errors in order for them to not reoccur. The article “Toward a Safer Health Care System,” focuses on the critical need to improve these measures. The IOM reported the mortality rates related to constant medical errors and how it is a major cause of death in the United States. Examples of patient safety issues can be medication errors, diagnostic errors, hospital facility safety, sepsis, administrative data safety, etc.