Patient Safety Officer Risk Management

The Healthcare field is becoming more aware of how important it is to change the way that organizational culture is becoming in order to help improve patient safety. Even though patient safety plays a very important part of our health care system which helps explain the importance quality of health care. However, when trying to keep patients safe, it can be a demanding challenge because of human errors and mistakes that are made. According to World Health Organization, patient safety is the absence of preventable harm to a patient while in the process of health care (who.int/patientsafety). Being in the position of a clinical content manager, the first step in reporting problems is to make sure that when reporting a problem, it need to be done at the earliest stage to show the importance to the company. The approach that I would take as a Clinical content manager is to identify the problem, have regular shift meetings to address any issues, flag any errors that occurred, have regular safety meeting, give feedback to staff on any errors that were found, try to figure out the best solution not only for the patients, but staff also, and although being a team leader, I would give the staff the opportunity to address any concerns that they may have.

The main objective of Beaumont Hospital is to provide high quality, efficient, accessible services, in a caring environment for Southeastern Michigan residents. Beaumont Hospital believes that patient safety is just as important as medical progression. Therefore, Beaumont Hospital’s risk management program consists of identifying hazard associated risks, controlling risks, and monitoring the effectiveness of procedures/practices. Risk is a part of patient care and services because everything doesn’t always go according to plan. Catastrophic patient injuries often occur because of unanticipated failures. The risk management team is responsible of effective surveillance, analysis, and prevention of events which may injure patients, lead to malpractice claims, or cause loss to the health care system. The risk management staff at Beaumont use the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) as a tool to anticipate what might go wrong with a process or product and how that failure effects the patient. FMEA is designed to dissect a particular process into its individual steps, isolate the potential steps that could cause the problem, assign a specific risk level to each abnormal step, analyze the risk potential for the process, and assign and action plan to correct the problem (Fibuch & Ahmed, 2014). The risk management team also evaluates and modifies potential problems. Beaumont Hospital’s risk management team helps avoid or eliminate risks by identifying an alternate

The risk management program in any business, especially in a health care organization is an integral part of its day to day operation. The purpose of the risk management department is summed up by Kavaler & Alexander (2014), “…a program designed to reduce the incidence of preventable accidents and injuries to minimize the financial loss to the institution should any accident or injury occur” (p. 5). Protecting employees, patients, vendors and visitors is an ongoing process and one that needs to be updated when the healthcare organization has deemed necessary. This paper will demonstrate the importance of presenting the risk management program to new employees, compliance with the standards set forth by the American Society of Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM), propose recommendations or changes needed to further improve the program, as well as examine the administrative process of managing a risk program.

As the Joint Commission aims to nationally improve health care systems through health care organizations collaborations, it publishes recommended patient safety goals. As stated by the Joint Commission, “the first obligation of health care is to “do no harm””. The Joint Commission’s 2015 National Patient Safety Goals for hospitals include : Identify patients correctly; Improve staff communication; Use

The Joint Commission also addresses safety issues through the publication and distribution of the Sentinel Event which identifies a severe breach in safety and addresses ways on how to improve processes and to prevent harm in the future. It also publishes the National Patient Safety Goals which address healthcare safety and ways to solve problems that focus on issues such as identifying patients correctly, improving communication among staff, and administering medications safely, just to name a few. “A majority of Joint Commission standards are directly related to safety, addressing such issues as medication use, infection control, surgery and anesthesia, transfusions, restraint and seclusion, staffing and staff competence, fire safety, medical equipment, emergency management, and security. The standards also include requirements for preventing accidental harm; responding to patient safety events; and the organization’s responsibility to tell patients about the outcomes of their care” (TJC,

All these priorities focus on the national patients safety goal as the most important in patient management and treatment, and guide the hospitals toward appropriate policies and protocols to follow and to minimize any possible mistakes or patients harm. I choose the priority focus area of Communication to discuss the current compliance status of our organization concentrating on the standards, which did not meet the Joint

This article was selected as it explained and discussed the probable standardized procedure that health care organizations may have to follow for improvements in patient safety. This article explains how the inter-personal and professional relationship of different health care providers need to be maintained for better health care as explained in one of the chapters of health care management.

Patient safety one of the driving forces of healthcare. Patient safety is defined as, “ the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of healthcare or as the prevention of errors and adverse events caused by the provision of healthcare rather than the patient’s underlying disease process. (Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, &Turunen, 2013)”. It was just as important in the past as it is day. Our healthcare field continues to strive to make improvement toward safer care for patients across the country.

A process was designed by Ascension Health to eliminate preventable injuries and deaths within five years by the identification of causes to patient harm. They worked to define best practices and use them to improve these areas of patient safety by creating a structure for continuous improvement. A Clinical Excellence Team was put together to help guide the pursuits of the goal. Prototype strategies were put together at eight volunteer or alpha sites. These sites were chosen based on past performance for leading quality improvement. No mention was made regarding financial resources except that organizational members recognize the business case supporting the changes (“Case Study,” 2006).

The Joint Commission has set forth standards for health care organizations to reduce the number of risks and amend the quality of care and the safety of the patient. Risk management and quality management focus on these attributes of the organization and the patient. Risks are impossible to avoid since it linked to everyday living and the workforce. Risk management must take the initiative to distinguish and oversee these risks. Due to the lack of consistency in the quality of care, health care organizations aim to reduce the negative outcomes of the patient safety through quality management methods. Internal and external factors may pose a risk that can have an impact on the organization and the consequence of the patient care and safety.

Dr. Ardizzone’s lecture was extremely thought provoking and eye opening for me. Of the topics discussed in her lecture, it was interesting to learn about the systematic steps in place to promote patient safety in an institution. Additionally, the steps implemented at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, as part of their Crisis Resource Management initiative, is commendable.

One thing that this website really stresses is the value of teamwork and being transparent with patient care on different levels. The purpose of an incident reporting system is to not necessarily focus on errors that occurred by individuals, but rather look at systems and see if there was a breakdown that occurred and what can be changed or implemented differently from preventing future errors from happening and potentially reaching the patient. The website can also be used to look at an organization as a whole and get healthcare leaders and executives to see the important role of patient safety and the impact that breakdowns can have not only on patients, but also the financial impact, which ultimately will impact the bottom line of any healthcare organization. At the facility where this writer is employed, whenever a safety event is reported, a team sits down to look at what happened before the event, during the event, and after the event. This approach is effective because the team involves individuals from different departments to gather ideas and thoughts about the incident, which was also discussed in the website about having the proper stakeholders present and advocating for patient safety (National Patient Safety Foundation, 2017). Overall, there are many factors that can have an impact on patient safety, but the National Patient Safety Foundation is a great source to start with when discussing ways to improve patient safety and utilizing the proper resources to initiate new practices and promote safer healthcare in the United

As the patient safety officer, I am involved in the frequent root cause analysis (RCA) that result in improvements due to a retrospective response to specific events. Likewise, I am involved in many patient safety and quality initiatives where information from occurrences is used to improve quality, such as the falls prevention program, hospital-acquired pressure ulcer prevention, medication safety to name a few. These are broader approaches for improvement using a collaborative, multidisciplinary effort directed at improving the quality throughout the organization rather than a specific reaction

Patient safety and quality care is the center of every health care provider’s initiatives. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report “To Err is Human”, adverse events and medical errors happen at an alarming rate with approximately 400,000 deaths a year (Epps & Levin, 2015). An evidence-based practice, team strategies and tools to enhance performance and patient safety (TeamSTEPPS), is a comprehensive program that brings staff together to train and enhance patient safety initiatives (Epps & Levin, 2015). The purpose of this paper is to determine the tools teams use to improve patient safety while incorporating teams’ strategies to provide quality care and how this applies to the

At the Hospital where I am doing my Practicum in the ICU they thrive to deliver high-quality health care. Two specific quality indicator which is govern around patient safety is Early Goal Therapy for Sepsis and New ICU Liberation in preventing ICU delirium which I think are of top concern and believe that everyone working in the ICU is responsible for ensuring and maintaining patients’ safety. The ICU physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and others that make up the interdisciplinary team make it a priority to do everything possible to help keep the patients safe. “ Continually develop, test, and implement new programs that help ensure patient safety, including medication safety, infection prevention, and reduction of surgical complications.