PATIENTS SAFETY IN HOSPITAL

PATIENTS SAFETY IN HOSPITAL

Every hospital is charged with the responsibility of keeping the patients safe when they are receiving their health care. A patient’s health concern is related to their safety concern since hospital safety issues are one of the leading causes of death in a hospital. Most of the safety issues can be addressed and avoided through the establishment of safety practices, which would start from the top with the patient safety officer to other members discerning to health care safety (CITE SCREENSHOT). The patient safety covers all issues that could cause the patient any harm when receiving their health care.

Improper diagnosis

Improper patient diagnostic is one of the major problems affecting the patients’ safety in the hospital. It is one of the most common medical malpractices causes by misdiagnosis. Diagnostics are related to risks associated with specimen loss, the reporting of the test results, lack of the patient’s engagement, and failure to order the

appropriate tests. In 2014, patient safety awareness stated that diagnostic errors were significant issues that are frequent than people realize(CITE). An improper diagnosis could cause medication errors that happen due to communication errors between patients, medical care providers, and pharmacists.

Although a set of standards for the best practices has not been established, some programs can be created to address the improper diagnosis of health issues. Use an operating system that ensures the sending of the image to the correct subspecialty of peers that can review the specimens and come up with the best diagnostics for the patient. This will considerably improve the quality of health care and also reduce the medication cost for the patient due to receiving the right treatment. With the shift of the hospital using new technologies, patients should also be engaged in their treatment processes and plans. This process will allow more minds to be involved in the issue, which will ensure better diagnosis outcomes. Involving the patient would also act as a defense layer against many safety issues that would bring about lawsuits.

Hands hygiene

Lack of proper hand hygiene can cause healthcare-associated infections between the patient and the caregiver. According to the centers for disease control and prevention(CDC), one in every 25 patients comes into connection with associated infections. As easy as it seems, most health works occasionally skip washing hands when handling patients in the hospital. Hand hygiene is the first line of defense when managing infectious diseases.

The hospital should implement hand hygiene interventions and train the medical caregivers to make sure they achieve the best hand hygiene observance like cleaning hands before and after every contact with a patient. Also, making use of personal protective equipment like gloves and mouth masks would highly improve health care safety. The clinicians should follow the proper guidelines provided by the CDC to use when donning and removing the PPE. This would boost the hospital with strategies that will help to control healthcare-associated infections. Using alcohol-based sanitizers when washing your hands kills germs and bacteria that can cause infections. Visitors and patients should also regularly clean their hands when in the hospital to gain protection from infectious diseases.

Health IT issues

Health IT is considered a blessing when it comes to medical data management in the hospital. Most of the devices in the hospital require information technology for their functioning. It is established in the hospital to achieve fast movement of processes, collect and analyze data, and also improve testing outcomes. However, there is a couple of issues caused by the use of health IT. They include cybersecurity of medical devices, patient data privacy, and data coding errors.

To improve the health IT would bring about improvement of the quality and safety of both the patients and caregivers. Proper implementation of IT programs can be a rocky start before all the workers are fully able to handle the changing technology. This creates a room of human errors during the data coding. The involved agents should be provided with the right training to establish a conducive environment for the patient’s safety. Use of cryptography to encrypt hospital data and other security measures like the use of electronic cards to access restricted areas would ensure the protection of medical devices and soft wares from hackers and cyberattacks.

For the hospital to attain its goal in handling safety issues in the hospital, there should be an inclusion of providing proper education and training to the medical

personnel. The hospital should also make use of the equipment provided efficiently and adequately to boost the hospital’s operating system. Making house calls to the patient by the health care providers and the pharmacist can help patients to improve their medication adherence, which would improve health safety and reduce readmission of the patient. The hospital can also implement programs that would encourage medical physicians and specialists to share medical data with others, which will establish shared decision-making tools. Directly involving the patients in their medication process also proves to be advantageous to improving health safety.

 

 

 

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