Patient Safety Website

The Joint Commission focuses on certain goals each year. For patient safety and positive outcomes, hospitals are required to follow certain standards. National Patient Safety Goals were established in 2002 to help identify areas of concern with patient safety. This group is made up by a panel of experts including nurses, doctors, pharmacists and many other healthcare professionals. They advise the Joint Commission on how to address these different patient safety issues. Two goals to be discussed are improving the accuracy of patient identification and medication safety. To improve patient

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 biggest difference between risk management and patient safety is the ability to fix issues and influence additional changes to create a safer environment for all patients. This is accomplished by changing the culture of the working environment rather than the specific issue being corrected, Patient safety tends to focus on being proactive to prevent mistakes,which is totally opposite of the reactive actions needed when mistakes occur as in risk management. Risk management uses lessons learned from past incidents as a means of defending the actions taken by individuals of a current incident. Patient safety, however,can support risk management by identifying and understanding why mistakes happen and take steps to make corrections to eliminate those mistakes from occurring in the future. In simple terms, patient safety is meant to have everyone operating on the same page with a general understanding of the expectations of their actions and creating a safer environment for the patient and the health care provider which requires constant assessment from everyone's perspective and making changes when

Given the complexity of healthcare system today, effective and efficient collaboration and communication among team members is critical to ensure patient safety. Daniel & Rosentein (2008) reported that during a typical patient’s hospital stay, a patient may interact with 50 different employees that may include doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, etc. They also reported that when healthcare professional are not communicating and collaborating effectively, patient safety is at risk for several reasons: break in communication flow, misinterpretation of information, incorrect telephone orders and overlooked orders.

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

The Joint Commission has instituted a number of goals nationally; the aim is to improve patient’s safety. The goals selected look at areas that are of concern in the healthcare industry particularly how it affect patients safety and make recommendations how to reduce if not eradicated these. The Joint Commission is the governing body that accredited hospitals and other health care organizations. The two hospitals that this paper will be comparing, using the goals and criteria recommended by the Joint commission, is Holy Cross Hospital located at 1500 Forest Glen Road, Silver Spring, MD and Shady Grove Hospital situated at, 9901 Medical Center Drive, Rockville, MD.

Finally, we must address accountability. We know hospitals, and long-term facilities can be a hectic work place and often face challenges of staffing issues and so forth. Nonetheless, we must be consistent. Godlock, Christiansen, and Feider (2016), recommends the use of a safety team in facility; some responsibilities may include identifying prevention strategies, education and teaching, spot checks, as well as patient chart reviews all of which promotes compliance and

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.

“Organizations with a positive safety culture are characterized by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures” (Stavrianopoulos, 2012, pg, 202). Communication and teamwork go hand and hand. An effective teamwork involves effective communication. No communication can lead to possible medical errors, whether the failure to communicate comes from the patient to the nurse or between the health care providers. Evidence based care is another factor which aids in safety. “Healthcare organizations that demonstrate evidence-based best practices, including standardized processes, protocols, checklists, and guidelines, are considered to exhibit a culture of safety” (Stavrianopoulos, 2012, pg, 203). Providing better safety means learning from the past mistakes. By understanding the root of the issue, which would then lead to learning how to improve the situation. Educational training about safety should be available for medical staff to attend and learn if there was to be any doubt in he or she’s mind. Patient centered care is another factor in providing safety. It focuses on the patient and their family. Helping patient’s and family be more active in the care of the health plan can lead to safer and better

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.

In general, there is a need for patient safety improvements. However, the good new is, that there have been some slow improvements, including a better foundation to address patient safety. A good example is the annual Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) survey designed to help healthcare organizations compare their safety record to other health care organizations. Over 600 hospitals participate each year in the volunteer survey. The results of the survey provide a baseline to track and evaluate patient safety interventions (Para. 15).

In order to improve something, it must first be measured. Therefore, it is the safety policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs that incidents involving the safety of patients or staff members are reported and that the results of this reporting be trended nationwide to identify problem areas and opportunities for improvement.

Patient safety, working as an effective member of the healthcare team to achieve patient safety, and provide safe care to the patient, family, and community by self and system performance are three different learning outcomes, yet with the same end goal. Ensuring safe care to all involved in a situation is not just the nurses’ responsibility, but every health care team member. In NURS4377 Risk Analysis and Implication for Practice, this nurse learned about an aspect of patient safety. An assignment given questioned safety in medication administration. This assignment presented a look into the dangers of medication, common errors by staff, and ways to decrease adverse events. NURS4373 Management and Leadership required a leadership self-assessment,

Reporting of an adverse event plays a vital role in the maintenance of patient safety and quality of care. There are two types of reporting system in the health care setting. The process which ensure the liability of Committed action is called “Mandatory reporting” (Lambton College in Toronto, 2017). On the other hand, the process which emphasized on patient safety is called “voluntary reporting” (Lambton College in Toronto,2017). However, there are some obstacles in the timely and efficiently reporting of errors and near-misses by personnel (Douglas & Peter,