The Article ' Barriers Of A Surgical Safety Checklist

In accordance with the World Health Organisation (WHO 2008) checklist and Local trust policies, a team briefing was held before the day’s list started. The checklist is part of a second Global Patient Safety Challenge initiative entitled ‘Safe Surgery Saves Lives’, aimed at reducing the number of surgical deaths worldwide and was launched in June 2008. This not

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 Priority Focus Area of Communication includes 3 Joint Commission (JC) standards relative to Universal Protocol. These 3 standards, which are components of the National Patient Safety Goals, are aimed at ensuring the correct

"To continuously improve health care for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value” (Jointcommission.org, 2015). These requirements are regimented in the National Patient Safety Goals and are enforced via surveys and internal inspections to ensure that healthcare institutions abide by the safety mechanisms put in place to facilitate the optimal patient outcomes and environments.

In 2003, as an outcome of all the sentinel events reported to the Joint commission lead to the creation of the “The Universal protocol for preventing wrong site, wrong procedures, and wrong person surgery” (Mulloy & Hughes 2008). So, one of the ways that could have potentially prevented the situation from happening at the first place was implementing the universal protocol procedure. According to the protocol the conduction of proper pre as well as post-operating procedures are extremely mandatory. Therefore, by enforcing a standardized routine pre-operating procedure such as verifying the patient as well as the correct site for the procedure, by having the medical staff or preferably the physician marking the operating site with his or her initials before the surgery will be an effective preventive measure (Mulloy & Hughes 2008).

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 Safe Surgery Save Lives initiative undertaken by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2008 focused on implementation of a surgical checklist. The safety checklist requires the surgical site be checked during the check in process as well as during the surgical time out.

With all of the possible problems that could occur during surgery, a wrong-site, wrong-patient mistake is one that should never arise. Nightingale Community Hospital (NCH) fully understands the importance of doing away with these errors and has set up protocol to work towards this goal. While the protocol is in place, it is not fully compliant with Joint Commission (JC) standards.

Use at least two patient identifiers when providing care. Double checking of ID bands and ID/Driver’s license of patient if possible. Using labels to mark all materials /items needed for the procedures. A two person check off procedure must be implemented. Items requiring labeling include: patient records, signed consents, and all assessments, diagnostic tests and x-rays. Also included should be any item that is needed for the procedure (blood products, devices, and equipment). Using a matching system, so that all items in the procedure area are matched to the patient. The matching system must be completed by a minimum of two staff members. These staff members should include a qualified staff member, nursing staff involved in the procedure, recovery room staff, and discharge staff.

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

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

Timing is everything when it comes to patient health outcomes. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive review of the critical value reporting process critical results to the appropriate staff members according to the guidelines described in the National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG) of the Joint Commission Accreditation on Healthcare Organizations (JACHO). The Joint Commission has listed the following NPSG for 2015: identify patients correctly, improve staff communication, use alarm safely, prevent infection, identify patient safety risks, and prevent mistakes in surgery (The Joint Commission, 2015). A pathologist first introduced critical values by the name of Lundberg over 30 years ago. A critical value was viewed as an indication that the patient was in graved danger unless interventions were done to address the decline in health status (Plebani, M. and Piva E. (2010). The national patient safety goal that reflects the benchmark on our medical-surgical/Telemetry unit was staffing communication in reporting critical values. Our facility as a whole was at 73% compliance for staffing communication. Our hospital 's compliance goal for staffing communication is 90%. However, our unit is currently at 75% compliance. Various factors contribute to the timeliness and compliance of reporting critical values including work force, material and methods, and equipment.

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.

At least half a million deaths per year could be prevented with effective implementation of systemic improvements in operating rooms. Specifically, multiple studies have found implementing the use of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist would significantly reduce surgical morbidity and mortality due to surgical errors.

* Hand washing is the most important method of preventing the spread of infection by contact (Ayliffe et al 1999). The Nottingham University Trust Policy on Hand Hygiene (2009) states that there are three types of hand hygiene, the first is ‘routine hand hygiene’ which involves the use of soap and water for 15 – 20 seconds or the application of alcohol hand rub until the hand are dry. The second is ‘hand disinfection’ which should be used prior to an aseptic procedure by washing with soap and water and applying alcohol hand rub afterwards. The third is ‘surgical hand washing’ which is the application of a microbial agent to the hands and wrists for two minutes. In addition to which a sterile, disposable brush may be used for the first surgical hand wash of the day although continued use will encourage colonisation of microbes. The third example is the most appropriate to any O.D.P undertaking the surgical role as it is the best way for the surgical team to eliminate transient flora and reduce resident skin flora (World Health Organization 2010). The first and second are important to any O.D.P undertaking any other role within the Operating Department as this is the best way to reduce the transient microbial flora without necessarily affecting the resident skin flora