Why Is It Important To Maintain Self-Care Priorities?

One of the recommendations for healthcare organizations to employ in an effort to reduce the number of errors is to advocate for voluntary error reporting nationally while conducting research and developing tools for patient safety. This way, information about errors can be gathered and prevented from reoccurring at health care sites and by health care providers. Voluntary error reporting will act as a warning of potential or actual errors and suggest ways to avoid them in the future.

Perrow discussed how some accidents are not avoidable. The premise of unavoidability is the basis of the normal accident theory (Hopkins, 2014). The health care industry is subject to regulations by The Joint Commission and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (Center for Medicare and Medicaid [CMS], 2013). Within complex systems such as health care, training on patient safety is of the utmost importance (Lukewich et al., 2015). As noted by Lukewich et al. (2015), without training and regulations of the healthcare industry, healthcare practitioners make mistakes and accidents happen. Concerning normal accident theory, the theory premise is that some accidents are not avoidable; however, patient safety is an expectation in the healthcare environment (Chowdhury & Habib, 2015). If healthcare staff receive training to reduce inefficiencies, mistakes are less likely to happen (Aebersold & Tschannen,

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.

It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).

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

When it comes to health care in the United States, the initial thought many people have are the many growing controversies concerning Obamacare, vaccinations, and making sure all Americans have access to affordable and quality health care. However, what many people fail to realize is a certain aspect in the medical community that, since the early 80’s with the infamous study by Berkman and Frankel, is increasing at such a tremendous rate that the Columbia Medical Review has referred to it as an “epidemic in the medical community.” The statistics regarding the number of individuals who die each year due to medical errors is rising; slowly becoming a major concern in the field. Doctors are busy individuals and at the end of the day still

The policy is a very realistic approach to solve this problem because as more individuals are insured under the ACA and have access to healthcare, they will utilize health facilities and hospitals more frequently for services or procedures and hospitals will have increased occurrences of adverse outcomes, if this is not addressed. Patients are the consumers. They seek satisfaction and quality with services. Quality health care and patient safety should be important to the patients, hospitals, health facilities, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, risk managers, and medical professionals and staff. Medical staff may feel over burdened to comply with the necessary steps to ensure the improvement of patient safety, which may require additional training.

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.

When the Institute of Medicine came out with a report called To Err Is Human it drew a lot of attention to the media on patient safety because of the statistics that the report found. One of the big things that this report found was that "between 44,000 and 98,000 people died each year in the United States hospitals due to medical errors and adverse events" (Bonacum, 2017, p. 3). This was also one of the reasons why the Healthcare Research and Quality Act of 1999 passed. This act allowed research to be done using scientific evidence and report things such as effectiveness, outcomes, costs, quality, etc. in the health care field ("Healthcare Research and Quality Act of 1999," 2014). It is a good thing that the Institute of Medicine came out with this report because it made patient safety a very important issue that needed to be resolved, it was definitely an eye opener. The above number of people dying because of medical errors is surprisingly high, if I did my math correctly that’s about 122-272 people dying each day. Wow! There are other factors that

Hughes (2008) quoting from the , the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality handbook stated that “many view quality health care as the overarching umbrella under which patient safety resides”. Friedman, Encinosa, Jiang & Mutter (2009) found that “safety events that result in hospital readmissions lead to hefty a financial burden on the institution”. In addition they believe that if more attention is given to address and “ assess the full extra cost of safety events and the factors influencing the rate of safety events, that strategies could be developed for health plans to improve incentives for safety” Friedman, Encinosa, Jiang & Mutter (2009). The Institute of Medicine (IOM) considers patient safety “indistinguishable from the

There are 440,000 people a year that die from a preventable variety of mistakes that are made in hospitals, which comes out to a little over 1,000 deaths a day, and is the number three cause of death behind cancer, and heart disease (hospitalsafetyscore). According to a group that rates hospitals named The Leapfrog Group a nonprofit watchdog group that grades hospitals for safety, (leapfrog) a majority of these deaths are very avoidable and are most of the time simple mistakes. Errors in Hospitals are a broad issue that gets hundreds of thousands of people killed every year; for the most part, they are preventable and are caused by overtesting, overdiagnosis, overtreatment, non-reporting, and lack of oversight, though there are ways to prevent

A medical error can be defined as a preventable and adverse effect of care and one that changes the lives of all those involved-whether it be the patient, the nurse, or the physician (Grober & Bohnen, 2015). Prior to reading The Wall of Silence by Gibson and Singh (2003), I was unaware of not only how common medical errors in healthcare are, but also how they affect people from all walks of life. Medical errors do not only occur in underserved regions with understaffed medical facilities, but they can also occur in what many consider the “best” areas with fully staffed and fully equipped hospitals and medical centers. Before reading this text, it was my belief that errors in healthcare occurred rarely and at best, effected one patient per every

Wrong site, wrong procedure, and wrong patient errors are avoidable safety issues. Nearly 1.9 trillion dollars are spent on medical errors each year in the United States (Catalano & Fickenscher, 2008). Between 1995 and 2007, 691 wrong-site surgeries have been reported to The Joint Commission's Sentinel Event data repository (AHC Media LLC, 2008). In 2003 in response to the outcry for better patient safety The Joint Commission

In today’s health care system, “quality” and “safety” are one in the same when it comes to patient care. As Florence Nightingale described our profession long ago, it takes work and vigilance to ensure we are doing the best we can to care for our patients. (Mitchell, 2008)

In today's modern world with plenty of technology, it is hard to believe that we cannot figure out how to reduce Medical errors. The issue of medical error is not new in health care organizations. It has been in spot light since 1990's, when government did research on sudden increase in number of death in the hospitals. According to Lester, H., & Tritter, J. (2001), "Medical error is an actual or potential serious lapse in the standard of care provided to a patient, or harm caused to a patient through the performance of a health service or health care professional." Medical errors