Risk Management And Sentinel Events

looking at mortality rates in patients seeking emergency care conclude that the rate of death is substantially higher during times of crowding (Richardson, 2006, p. 213).

Nightingale Community Hospital identified a recent sentinel event involving the ambulatory surgical center. A sentinel event is defined as an unexpected occurrence involving death or serious physical or psychological injury, or the risk thereof (http://www.jointcommission.org/sentinel_event). A three year old female presented to the hospital on September 14th for a planned outpatient procedure. The child was accompanied by her mother. The mother registered the patient with the registrar prior to the procedure. The patient and her mother went to the pre-operative area to complete the informed consent and the necessary physical assessment. The pre-operative nurse obtained the necessary contact

The main objective of healthcare professionals is to provide the best quality of patient care and the highest level of patient safety. To achieve that objective, there are many organizations that help improve the quality of care. One of the best examples is the Joint Commission. Unfortunately, the healthcare system is not free from total risks. In healthcare activities, there are possible errors, mistakes, near miss and adverse events. All of those negative events are preventable. But, it is clear that errors caused in healthcare result in thousands of deaths in the United States.

This documentary video is very informative and very useful as eye-opener to all that works in the healthcare industry. John Hopkins patient safety expert have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S. This large number, victims of medical error, leads to a stigma that people became questioning and doubting the capabilities of healthcare providers resulting on losing trust. This video “Chasing Zero” is a reminder that all nurses, doctors and all the people that works in healthcare industries should be very cautious on the care they provide to patients. A single error can hurt and worst, it can kill someone. This video made me realize as a nurse, that anyone can make a big mistake regardless of years

As defined by the Joint Commission (2014) a sentinel event is an unexpected occurrence involving death, or serious physical, psychological injury, or the risk thereof. With this said Nightingale community Hospital recently experienced a sentinel event

Hospital is the place to go when someone is sick and requires medical attention. It is shocking to know that one can contract diseases while in the hospital facility which were not present during admission. And that ‘Never Events’ which are preventable incidents such as wrong site surgery do occur in the hospital setting. How do we prevent hospital acquired conditions and never events from occurring in the hospital? It will be interesting to figure out the answers to these questions as hospital acquired conditions and Never Events are the major concerns of the health care system.

Risk management is about reducing the likelihood of errors with the aim of improving and monitoring the quality of health care services. The purpose for risk and quality management is to improve the care of the patients and reduce liability among the staff and the patients. In following risk and quality management protocols

Each year medical errors cause more than 400,000 American deaths and at least 10-20 times that number experience serious harm. Researchers say that is equivalent to “three 747 airplanes crashing each day.” Medical errors rank as the third-leading cause of death in America. Therefore, patient safety is a national concern.

The most influential governments and human rights agencies in the 21stcentury are now focusing their efforts on human health and security. In many presidential campaigns todays reducing the mortality rate of children, the youth and the old due to diseases is among the main manifesto of the contestants. This shows how life are being valued by our government through bills like the Obama medical bill. As a result of the advancement in technology and the computerization of many operations, hospitals are not an exception in this movement. Today, we have full automated and computerized hospitals where manual operations and other complicated operations are being done by the help

When patients are discharged from a hospital, they are being discharged without fully being aware that they could end up dying or being readmitted because the doctors did not watch or help the patient enough. There are steps and procedures that hospitals can take in order to figure out what 's best for the patient. The health administration should be doing more for those patients who are about to be discharged from a hospital because death and readmission rates, how it physically affects the patients, and the tools that can be used to help protect the patients better. Some would say that hospitals are just trying to keep you for your money and not for your safety. Having to be readmitted is very hard on patients and can be very costly. A

All of the quality indicators are important for hospital quality but the in-patient quality indicators for mortality rates are essential for better care. Research has shown that mortality indicators varying across different hospitals and suggests there could be deficiencies in quality of care that is causing this wide range. Therefore the mortality rates as quality indicators are important to provide better quality of care across our

Although the majority of the above deaths were inevitable consequences to well-known and documented complications of diseases, yet, the link between in-hospital mortality and the quality of healthcare remains to be a major issue in the minds of prospective patients, as much as it is an ever-growing target in the minds of healthcare providers. Therefore, many attempts have been made to identify factors leading to in-hospital disease-specific complications or mortality over the past

This was a cross-sectional study, conducted using data collected from four hospitals affiliated with the Medical Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS). The four hospitals were chosen because they vary in the demographics of the communities they serve, in size and setting. Hospital 1 is a 918-bed general hospital with an average of approximately 4517 inpatients per month (mean 4517.3, standard deviation [SD] ± 417); Hospital 2 is a 837-bed general hospital with an average of approximately 5121 inpatients per month (mean 5120.6, SD ± 385); Hospital 3 is a 136-bed woman’s hospital with an average of approximately 1073 inpatients per month

The first three dimensions relate to the burden of illness presented to the hospital by the patient. The fourth and fifth dimensions, dependency and non-operating room life support procedures, have been included for internal monitoring purposes only. They are defined so as to be minimally influenced by the hospital staffand by practice patterns in an institution. We have found that they are the least significant variables in predicting overall Severity of Illness. The last two variables reflect the response of the patient to the hospitalization. It is important to note that it is not what is done to the patient that drives the Severity of Illness Index, but what the patient actually looks like. The signs and symptoms of the patient's principal

hospitals, 69% of which were at least partially due to errors in patient management. In 2000, the Institute of Medicine published a report that concluded that more people died each year from preventable errors in hospitals than from car accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS.