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What Are The Gap In Access To Medical And Surgical Care?

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There are substantial gaps in access to medical and surgical care across the world. Even regions and groups of people within large countries, such as South Africa, have an array of inequalities that can often translate into vast disparities in patient outcomes. Considering these differences when evaluating ways to decrease morbidity and mortality is imperative to bettering patient care. Surgical outcomes, in particular, are examined to ensure quality practice and identify areas for improvement. For instance, acute high-risk abdominal surgeries, such as emergency open laparotomies, have a diverse underlying pathology and thus varied results for the patient (Saunders et al., 2012). This combination of progressive disease processes and …show more content…

This increased risk can be attributed to many factors for which a detailed outcome measurement should be performed, tailored specifically to the population and region of urban South Africa. This will allow the hospital in question to understand what needs improvement and how to implement these changes.
Identifying causes and ultimately recommending specific ways to improve care can influence patient outcomes greatly. Preoperative optimization, such as antibiotics and goal-directed fluid therapy, can result in a significant enhancement in patient hemodynamics and welfare (Huddart et al., 2015). Appropriate postoperative care and effective management of complications could also be an important modifiable factor in emergency open laparotomy surgery. Allocating resources suitably like intensive care support and apt image diagnostics can also better patient health (Huddart et al., 2015). For example, a pre-operative calculation of mortality would change the way a patient’s case is handled if it is known from the beginning that additional resources and increased communication between specialties will be required to deliver proper care. Implementing quality improvement bundles encompassing these types of components, along with ensuring quick preoperative identification of the pathology and

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