Why Is Patient Safety Important In Healthcare

The goal of this paper is to investigate the application of technology to reduce error in healthcare. The Institute of Medicine reports: to Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System in 1999, which estimates of more than a million injuries and 100,000 deaths attributable to medical errors annually. This numbers of deaths are errors that resulted from medical errors..

Patient safety is of utmost importance to prevent errors and adverse effects associated with patients in health care. Yet, 44,000 to 90,000 people die each year from preventable medical errors (Potter & Peter) caused by human factors. According to World Health Organization (2009) human factors is defined as:

Los Angeles, Doctor and founder John McLaughlin, came up with the idea to reduce health care costs and improve patient safety

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 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.

In general, there is a need for patient safety improvements. However, the good new is, that there have been some slow improvements, including a better foundation to address patient safety. A good example is the annual Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) survey designed to help healthcare organizations compare their safety record to other health care organizations. Over 600 hospitals participate each year in the volunteer survey. The results of the survey provide a baseline to track and evaluate patient safety interventions (Para. 15).

The IOM’s report “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System” shocked the health care world and made change necessary. “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System” released information that reported that tens of thousands of Americans were dying each year from errors (IOM, 1999). Patient safety moved to the forefront in healthcare like never before and directives were discussed to put quality as a

Patient safety is the top priority because health situation may change within few minutes depending on severity of the case. In this incident, physical injury has not taken place but the potentiality of injury is extremely high and there is a narrow space between the risk and injury. I have determined that next time i will give my first priority for safety measures no matter what area it is. In clinical practices, if my errors harm the resident, it is personally, ethically and professionally objectionable. I have learnt to place the bed to the lowest level and raise the side rails before I leave the resident’s room. Safety is resident’s right .Safety comes everywhere as priority and careful handling the elderly population is one of the higher

Radio frequency identification chip implanted into humans can decrease the amount of human errors or medical errors and improve safety of patients. Unfortunately, as many as 98,000 Americans die and hundreds of thousands more are seriously injure each year in U.S. hospitals due to preventable medical errors. Hospitals errors are the fifth leading cause of death, killing more Americans than traffic accidents, AIDS and breast cancer. (Woo, Ranji & Salganicoff, 2008). Also according to Wen, Choa-Hsien, Zang, “more Americans are die from medical errors than people killed by plane crashes and AIDS combined. It is estimated that over ten thousand injuries are cause by medical mistakes each year, according to the institute of medicine. U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimated the number is as high as 500,000. The FDA also noted that the problem is preventable if appropriate technologies and information are implemented. They also point out that misidentification, adverse drug events, missing infants or mismatching are serious patient safety risk in the health system.” (2010). People are lead to believe that only a handful of genuine medical errors are made each year at American

Quality of care, and patient safety matters. Quality of care does not happen overnight; it is a system that an organization creates to measure, assess, and improve performance. This quality management system is a set of interrelated or interacting elements that organizations use to direct and control the implementation of quality policies and achieve quality objectives (Spath, 2013).

Hi Mary. I agree, there is a need for increased fall education and patient safety awareness of staff. Nurses play a key role in patient safety. I believe that being a nurse is a constant evolution, we evolve as we practice. Nursing will never be stagnant and we see every day that nursing research helps to bring forth more effective nursing care. It is vital to emphasize the clinical nursing research to guide nursing practice and to improve the health and quality of life of our patients (Polit and Beck, 2012). Hospitalization increases fall risk because of unfamiliar environment, illnesses, and treatment. Patient falls and fall-related injuries are devastating to patients, clinicians, and the health care team. A single fall may result in a fear

As we all know, patient safety in a healthcare setting is extremely important and is to be taken very seriously. This is a very challenging topic with any healthcare establishment, because people do make errors and it’s only human. It is everybody’s job within the facility, hospital, or any healthcare setting to work on making sure that the safety of every patient that enters and leaves their building is safe. We want patients to feel safe and confident when they have to go to the hospital for a procedure, or even to a skilled nursing facility to have rehabilitation or to eventually stay long term.

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,

In response to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendation that healthcare facilities use patient safety reporting system to evaluate why patients are harmed by medical care (Provonost, et al., 2008), the University Hospital has adapted Safety Intelligence as its patient safety reporting system. Safety Intelligence or SI is a web-based patient safety reporting system that makes reporting of a patient event easy and simple. The staff can use SI with minimal training and is readily accessible electronically through the hospital portal, e.g., my.uhnj.org.

Currently, there is an incidence of patient safety events in hospitals, and sadly these events occur more often in the care for immigrant patients in comparison with patients born in the United States. Although this data proposes a drawback in the medical community, I believe the first step in reducing this disparity is elimination of cultural barriers in health care. Patients are not as homogenous as they used to be in the past, as the United States has incorporated diverse immigrant and cultural groups and continues to attract people from around the globe. Population experts predict the United States will become a majority “minority” nation by 2050 (Johnson, 2016), which is indicative of the nation’s altering demographics. These statistics