Summary: Ensuring Patient Safety

The National Patient Safety Goals were created in response to the IOM article, To Err is Human: Building Safer Health Systems. These goals were written to address patient safety and are tailored depending on the health care setting to which they are written for. They address system wide solutions rather than focusing on whom or how the error was made. Medical errors have been noted as being the 8th leading cause of death in the U.S. with the most frequent of these errors being medication related (Johnson, K., Bryant, C., Jenkins, M., Hiteshew, C., & Sobol, K. 2010). Therefore a great focus on these goals is needed across the health care continuum. The goals are updated and amended on a regular basis using evidence-based research, in response to areas with high errors in patient safety.

Medical technology encompasses a wide range of healthcare products and is used to diagnose, monitor, and treat diseases or medical conditions that affect humans. This may included but not limited too, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and medical equipment. Such technologies are intended to improve the quality of healthcare delivered through earlier diagnosis, less invasive treatment options and reductions in hospital stays and rehabilitation times. Recent advances in medical technology have also focused on cost reduction. Medical technology may include medical devices, information technology, biotech, and healthcare services. The impacts of medical technology may involve social and ethical issues. For example physicians may seek objective information from technology rather than listening to subjective patient reports. A major contributor of healthcare expenditure in America is the advancement of medical technology. According to several studies it is shown that there is a correlation between the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) and money allocated to healthcare. One of the leading theories is that medical technology is growing faster than expected.

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.

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.

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?

One of the primary goals in healthcare is patient safety. Goal one in The Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goals is to correctly identify the patient using two patient identifiers (The Joint Commission, 2017). For this reason, all healthcare facilities should have processes in place to prevent errors. Also recommended for patient safety is the use of the Universal Protocol to prevent wrong site, wrong procedure, and wrong patient surgery (The Joint Commission, 2017). Implementation of these two safety measures by Curative Health would help prevent potentially harmful errors in the future.

After reviewing the 2014 Patient Safety Goals, the one that drawn my attention the most, is the Patient Identification goal. The article that I chose is Patient Safety Solutions. This article was written back in May 2007. This article is about the failure to identified patients correctly and the consequences that occur as a results. Some of the bad outcomes as a result of such failures include, patients received wrong blood transfusion, laboratory received wrong blood for different patients. There were wrong patients being operated on, and patients were given wrong medications.

Hello Mary. I agree there is a need for increased fall education and patient safety awareness of staff. We play a vital role in patient safety and quality improvement. I believe that being a nurse is a constant learning, we learn as we practice. Nursing research helps us to bring forth more efficient nursing care. According to Beck and Polit, it is important to emphasize the clinical nursing research to guide nursing practice and to improve the health and quality of life of our patients (2012). Unfamiliar environment, illnesses, and treatment increase the risk of the patient for falls. We are restraint free in our long-term care unit. Staffs are always looking for alternatives to prevent falls such as medication changes, alarms, 1:1 sitter,

Safety needs is the second level of needs in the Maslow Hierarchy of needs. Nurses have to believe they are safe in order for their patients to feel and be safe. The nurse to patient ratio is another thing that the nurse manager or a leader should take into account and consideration. For this reason, it is important to understand the full scope of nursing practice other than the basic nursing tasks ‘nursing assessments, medication administration, dressing changes…’ “The nursing profession, including professional and specialty organizations, is responsible to its members and to the public to define the scope of practice and standards of practice” (American Nurses Association, 2017). Patients present with different diagnosis and needs which requires

With the enforcement of both the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), our health care systems have undergone drastic and continuous change in health care policy, regulations, and reforms. This has significantly changed the way our health care organizations have provided medical services to patients, and at the same time meet new health care law requirements. The issue, however, in meeting these reforms lies in ensuring patients receive quality care at an affordable price, and that health care organizations meet these goals through technological improvements with Healthcare Information Technology (HIT). In doing so, health care organizations can not only meet the new health care law requirements, but, at the same time, save financial resources to improve quality standards of care for patients in the present and in the future.

Patient safety is an essential component of hospital environments that has generated international debates and received many interpretations. It involves practices that seek to reduce risks and unnecessary health-related medication errors to an acceptable minimum (Silva & Camerini, 2012). Nurses’ role in the medication process includes administering drugs. This role exposes them to the possibility of making errors that can potentially harm the patient, or even result in death. The research articles authored by Westbrook et al. (2011) entitled “Errors in the Administration of Intravenous Medications in Hospital and the Role of Correct Procedures and Nurse Experience” and Ding et al. (2015) titled “Incidence of Intravenous Medication Errors

Technology has truly played a pivotal role in the advancement of today’s healthcare system. Carl Houston (2013) discusses how technology has made huge advancements in things such as: genetics and genomics, less invasive and more accurate tools for diagnosis and treatment, 3-d printing, robotics, biometrics, and computerized physician/provider order entry and clinical decision maker. With today’s advanced technologies, patients with more complex health issues, which would have killed them in the past, can now be treated. Interventions and cures that we did not even think were possible years ago, are being used. For nurses, electronic health records (HER) allows them to have quick access to the patients medication and health history information

Communication is the most critical part of human relationships. This is valid for patient-provider relationship also. We expect that innovation will build effectiveness and diminish expenses and latencies. Furthermore, the right innovation holds the guarantee of much enhancing quiet patient safety, particularly when patients are under the consideration of various physician’s. Information Technology for Patient Safety depends on data gathered by the World Health Organization's (WHO) Patient Safety Working Group and contemplated the part of IT in enhancing patient safety. Perceiving those present guidelines in health IT concentrate on data capture and information trade, the

patient safety in addition to provide data integrity (The Advisory Board Company, 2014). Instead of adding another layer of technology to the already complicated workflow of the nurse, the Patient Touch clinical workflows are delivered via Apple iOS, a consumer technology that is proven to be easy-to-use. Combining clinically-rich functionality with intuitive mobile technology that is always with the caregiver, the PatientTouch system is the first device to deliver on the point-of-care promise (PatientSafe Solution, 2015). It is used for wireless transmissions or communications and is a mobile computing device and software consisting of data transceivers, wireless networks and gateways for management of data (PatientSafe Solution,

In order for our current health care system to keep growing and reaching new heights technological advancement are necessary. Patients are doing their own research to find hospital facilities with clinicians that are using advanced new technologies to diagnose and treat with minimally invasive procedures that have recovery time, less pain and better outcomes. Advances in health care technology are contributions from nurses, physicians, patients and other health care professionals. Technology used in health care is used by clinicians to provide safe, effective and efficient care in order to have better patient outcomes. With the help of technology clinicians are able to gather patient information better for research, treatments, and