Improving Patient Safety in Stroke Rehabilitation Wards - Essay Example

Improving Patient Safety in Stroke Rehabilitation Wards (Assessment 2a) Student’s Name Institution Improving Patient Safety in Stroke Rehabilitation Wards (Assessment 2a) Introduction Patient safety is a major issue in health care, especially in the public sector. Studies show that as many as 10 patients get harmed daily as they receive care in stroke rehabilitation wards in hospitals in the United States alone. Patient safety refers to mechanisms for preventing patients from getting harmed as they receive health care services in hospitals. The issue of patient safety is usually associated with factors such as medication errors, wrong-site surgery, health care-acquired infections, falls, diagnostic errors, and readmissions. Patient safety can be improved through strategies such as improving communication within hospitals, increasing patient involvement, reporting adverse events, developing protocols and guidelines, proper management of human resources, educating health-care providers on the need for patient protection, and commitment of the leadership to the task. This paper talks about patient safety and how it can be improved in stroke rehabilitation wards of both public and private hospitals. Organizational Goal/Objectives for Patient Safety Every hospital is committed to ensuring that their patients in stroke rehabilitation wards and other facilities are safe from any form of harm that may occur as a result of the health care providers’ negligence. Firstly, every hospital integrates quality and safety approaches into its everyday’s operations to promote and enhance the safety and quality of its environment and services respectively (Graban, 2011). This is usually complemented by other strategies meant for enhancing organizational knowledge to improve efficiency and overall productivity. Some hospitals provide further training to their health care personnel to ensure that they efficiently incorporate quality improvement practices in their operations (Williams, 2007). Secondly, every hospital must put in place approaches to assist in training its physicians and other workers on quality improvement methods. Most hospitals achieve this through project-based training in which every worker is training according to their area of study or specialization (Williams, 2007). To improve patient safety and quality, hospitals’ managements must ensure that infrastructure and other support systems are well-maintained and in the right state (Newhouse & Poe, 2005). This, at times, is done by the propagation of quality improvement approaches within and outside the health organizations (Manasse & Thompson, 2005). In addition, hospitals are committed to educating their employees and patients on factors that undermine patient safety and the need to control them. Hospitals should spend enough time to educate their employees and clients about falls and medical errors and how these factors can be mitigated (Graban, 2011). More emphasis should be laid on how nursing assistants and licensed physicians can work together to prevent or minimize the factors undermining patient safety and quality in the stroke rehabilitation wards of various hospitals (Myers, 2012). Factors Affecting Patient Safety There are a number of factors that pose challenges to patient safety in the stroke rehabilitation wards. One of them is medical errors, which occur when a patient is given the wrong medication. A medical error can also occur when a patient is given the right medication, but in the wrong manner or dosage (Dlugacz, 2009). Medication errors happen quite often and are considered a major hindrance to achieving the required standards of patient safety. It is evident that many deaths and serious medical conditions caused by medication errors can be prevented by initiation strategies to improve patient safety. A lot of money could also be saved by implementing such strategies to avoid the costs involved in correcting such errors (Fin, 2011). Falls are another factor that undermines patient safety in stroke rehabilitation wards. Falls are one of the major courses of injuries within and outside hospitals (Dlugacz, 2009). They normally occur to patients who have suffered from illnesses for a long time such as elderly people who need care and support as they walk around. If strategies could be put in place to prevent falls and save the health care resources, which are used to treat injuries sustained from falls; the saved money could be utilized in other areas that need it most (Fin, 2011). Lastly, hospitals’ efforts to improve and maintain a high level of patient safety within their stroke rehabilitation wards is at times thwarted by health-care acquired infections (HAIs). HAIs are infections that patients contract while undergoing treatment at the hospital (Kolker, 2011). An infection is regarded as a HAI if it is contracted when a patient has already begun treatment at the hospital’s facilities (Exworthy, 2012). Whenever these HAIs occur, the hospital is forced to spend huge amounts of money and resources to treat or reverse them. The hospital could save a lot of money if it implemented strategies for ensuring high standards of patient safety to prevent the HAIs from occurring (Watcher, 2012). Steps to Improve Patient Safety in the Stroke Rehabilitation Ward There are a number of steps that a hospital can implement in its stroke rehabilitation ward to ensure high levels of patient safety, which could help it prevent sick persons from getting harmed. Although there are many strategies for improving patient safety, the paper discusses five of such strategies: improving communication within the ward, increasing patient involvement, reporting adverse events, developing and implementing protocols and guidelines, and educating health-care providers on the need to improve monitor and protect the sick within the stroke rehabilitation wards. Improving Communication within the Ward Lack of proper communication within the stroke rehabilitation ward is one of the main causes of medical errors, hospital acquired infections, and other factors that undermine patient safety within the ward. Poor communication can be caused by a number of aspects, including background noises, fatigue, dialects, and inappropriate pronunciation. Lack of proper communication within the ward may also be caused by the use of abbreviations that cannot be understood by the other parties and illegible handwriting that is not easy to read (Schuster, Schuster, & Nykolyn, 2010). A proper communication between health providers working in the stroke rehabilitation ward is a vital step that can be taken to improve patient safety within the facility. Proper communication can be achieved by first defining the role of each health practitioner working at the ward to rule out any confusion that could occur when one task is carried out by more than one personnel, while others are left undone (Nemeth, 2008). Effective communication can also be realized by encouraging teamwork among health care specialists at the ward. Teamwork can give the caregivers a good opportunity to have full control over the activities they carry out at the ward and ensure that all of them are successful (Schuster, Schuster, & Nykolyn, 2010). Hospitals can also improve communication within their stroke rehabilitation wards by installing advanced information technology, which can include the use of computers and the Internet to facilitate exchange of information between health care staff working at the ward (Hartley & Benington, 2010). Advanced information technology is known to be efficient in accuracy and speed; as a result, it can help a lot in saving time at the ward by ensuring that medical operations are done within the set deadlines (Nemeth, 2008). Increasing Patient Involvement Research demonstrates that patients can contribute a lot to their own safety at the hospitals. Promotion of patient awareness regarding safety issues is one of the most effective approaches to achieving high levels of patient safety in various wards. However, this strategy is overlooked and rarely is it applied in hospitals (Lawton & Armitage, 2012). Increasing patient awareness concerning their safety is likely to increase their consciousness and responsiveness to the problems that occur in at the hospital (Youngberg, 2013). This is likely to encourage patients to become active participants in their treatment and rehabilitation. The same approach to increasing patient awareness can be applied in stroke rehabilitation wards where patients need great care and assist the caregivers to enhance their safety. This can be done by holding regular sessions in which patients in the wards are taught about their safety and given a chance to report to the management of the wards any cases they think could interfere with their safety (Youngberg, 2013). When patients are adequately informed about their rights, which include access to medication and other health facilities, they can help identify and report cases of medical errors and other aspects that undermine their safety (Lawton & Armitage, 2012). Reporting Adverse Events at the Ward In health organizations, the successful prevention of adverse events significantly depends on systematic and effective data collection and analysis and relaying of information to the people who need it most (Croskerry, 2009). This involves the use of gadgets to facilitate communication between patients and health care providers. This also entails installing voluntary and mandatory reporting systems for identification of less-severe issues as well as serious and fatal incidents respectively. The systems should be efficient and easy to use by patients (Pauley & Pauley, 2012). This approach can work at stroke rehabilitation wards and can greatly assist in promoting patient safety within the stroke rehabilitation wards. Hospitals need to install reporting systems within the wards and teach patients how to use them. The patients should also be encouraged to use the systems to report any events, which they regard as a threat to their safety, to the concerned authorities within the hospitals (Croskerry, 2009). With such reporting systems, health care providers would be kept in check; as a result, they would always try their best to avoid mistakes and negligence, which could cause harm to patients at the wards (Pauley & Pauley, 2012). Developing and Implementing Protocols and Guidelines Developing and implementing the necessary protocols and guidelines are ways of minimizing human errors in medical operations. This process involves the use of protocols, guidelines, checklists, and reminders to promote better and more effective patient communication (Salas & Frush, 2013). For instance, encouraging the use of computerized guidelines, double-checking, and use of pre-printed orders in high-risk medication can help reduce medication and diagnostic errors in the treatment process (Cristian, 2012). These protocols and guidelines can also be used at the stroke rehabilitation wards to reduce cases of falls and medication errors that interfere with patient safety within the wards. The protocols applied in the rehabilitation wards should include educating patients about risk factors for various diseases to encourage them to participate in strengthening their safety within the wards (Cristian, 2012). The caregivers at the rehabilitation wards also need to be encouraged to follow the checklists, guidelines, protocols, and reminders installed at the wards to facilitate their operations (Salas & Frush, 2013). This way, the practitioners at the wards would be able to prevent falls, medical errors, diagnostic errors, and hospital-acquired infections among the patients undertaking stroke rehabilitation programs at the health facility. Educating Health-Care Providers on the Need for Patient Safety Studies show that passive methods, which include lectures, guidelines, and notes, work well in making health care providers to attain the standards set by hospitals. The methods have been proven to be effective in the creation of a health environment in which high levels of safety and accountability are promoted (Grol, Wensing, Eccles, & Davis, 2013). Health practitioners can be educated on the need to maintain high levels of patient safety through seminars, on-site experience, and workshops. Once they are adequately trained, the practitioners should then be encouraged to implement strategies for promoting the safety of their patients (Wu, 2011). Health care providers working at stroke rehabilitation ward can also be educated on the need for patient safety to encourage them to implement strategies for enhancing the security of the sick at the wards (Wu, 2011). Hospitals can organize workshops and seminars in which these health care providers can be taught how to prevent factors that undermine patient safety and the importance of ensuring high security standards (Grol, Wensing, Eccles, & Davis, 2013). In so doing, hospitals would be ensuring maximum safety of their patients at the stroke rehabilitation wards; this would save the resources that go into waste in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions caused by lack of patient safety in the stroke rehabilitation wards. Approach for Implementing the Strategies The strategies for improving patient safety within the stroke rehabilitation ward discussed above can be implemented through introduction and proper use of an effective human resources management in the hospitals. Studies have revealed that hospitals with poor human resources management, accompanied by understaffing and overworking of employees, have a higher number of cases of adverse events such as medication and diagnostic errors, which occur at the stroke rehabilitation wards. Poor management of human resources is also associated with increased stress of health workers and cases of human errors caused by cognitive failures (Niles, 2013). The management of human resources in hospitals is critical to enhancing patient safety within their stroke rehabilitation wards and other facilities where patients receive care. Hospitals need to employ human resource managers and other experts to help them implement strategies for improving patient safety within their stroke rehabilitation wards. The hospitals can employ the human resource experts to specifically deal with issues affecting health care providers who work at the hospitals’ stroke rehabilitation wards (Roussel, 2013). Human resource managers can help hospitals to address issues relating to health manpower at the stroke rehabilitation wards. Firstly, the managers ensure that enough workers are employed to work at the wards to avoid cases of shortage and overworking of the available staff members (Niles, 2013). Secondly, the managers ensure that the employees working at the wards are paid the right amount of salary and in a timely manner to motivate them to give the best services to the patients at the wards (Spurgeon, Burke, & Cooper, 2012). Performance Indicators for Measuring Implementation Process Success There are two performance indicators that can be used to gauge the success of the implementation of the process described above. One of the indicators is the graphic rating scale, which is suitable for measuring aspects of employee performance and productivity. The scale contains jobs duties and performance standards set for each task. The graphic scale can be used within the stroke rehabilitation wards to measure the performance of every worker in relation to their commitment to ensuring patient safety at the wards (Snell & Bohlander, 2013). Forced ranking can also be used to measure the success of the implementation process. Forced ranking involves managers and supervisors ranking employees into three categories: high, average, and lowest performers. Similar criteria can be used to measure employee performance at the stroke rehabilitation wards according to their commitment to promoting patient safety. When such a ranking procedure is introduced in the rehabilitation wards, all employees are likely to do their best to enhance patient safety in their various capacities (Dubrin, 2012). How to Involve Stakeholders in the Process Stakeholders can be involved in the ongoing process of improving patient safety at the stroke rehabilitation wards through motivation and direct engagement. The main stakeholders in the process are patients and their families, employees, the government, and investors. Patients and their families can be involved in the process by educating them on the right treatment and rehabilitation procedures and informing them to report to the management in case they experience any cases of misconduct by the health care providers who attend to them. The patients can also be motivated by encouraging them to take part in seminars and workshops organized to enlighten them on the various ways of increasing their safety. In the case of employees, motivational and engagement strategies usually revolve around proper staffing, adequate salaries, and provision of rewards in terms of monetary and non-monetary forms (Messmer, 2001). Sufficient staffing is one of the major strategies for motivating employees to embrace the ongoing process of improving patient safety at stroke rehabilitation wards. Sufficient staffing implies employing enough health workers at the wards to ensure that operations at the ward are completed in the correct way and in a timely manner. The issuance of adequate remuneration in form of salaries, accompanied by other rewards can also encourage employees to participate in the ongoing process fully (Healey & Marchese, 2012). The government and other investors can be motivated and engaged in the ongoing process by presenting to them the plan, which if well-designed, would inspire them to increase their financial support to the hospital. The strategy is viable and can help to save lots of money and resources, which normally go to waste as a result of lack of strategies for improving patient safety in hospitals. Role of the Leader in the Process Leaders play a significant role in implementing strategies for improving patient safety at stroke rehabilitation wards. It is argued that when implementing a process in health organizations, more attention and effort should be focused on the organizational leadership of the firm (Sanchez, 2012). It is leaders who can mobilize and inspire employees and other stakeholders to create an environment in which health workers are encouraged to avoid reckless acts that may undermine patient safety in the wards (Jasper & Jumaa, 2005). Leaders of organizations that provide health care services can become champions of patient safety by promoting an organizational culture where employees and patients are encouraged to report adverse events that might undermine the enhancement of patient safety (Farley, 2009). The culture so far created should also encourage thorough investigations to find the root causes of the events and provide effective solutions for addressing them. The organizational culture can also help in maintaining effective safety systems in stroke rehabilitation wards (Hickey & Kritek, 2012). Lastly, the leaders, who mostly include health-care managers, can implement strategies for supporting and maintaining high levels of patient safety once the strategy is adopted. Health care workers are most likely to remain highly committed to following the set safety protocols and guidelines in heath organizations if the same is given priority by the management. With appropriate guidelines and protocols, leaders can help the health workers to identify factors hindering the patient safety improvement process and address them (JCR, 2005). Conclusion The ever increasing number of medical services, medications, patients, and complex procedures involved in treatment significantly increase the chances of medication errors, diagnostic errors, and hospital-acquired diseases. These issues undermine patient safety in hospitals, especially in stroke rehabilitation wards, leading to incurrence of extra expenses or even deaths in some cases. Improving patient safety within stroke rehabilitation wards can enable hospitals to prevent harms that usually occur to patients as a result of health care providers’ negligence and recklessness. The role of leaders in the implementation of strategies for improving patient safety in stroke rehabilitation wards is extremely essential. Leaders can help to develop these strategies and provide a suitable timeframe for their implementation. They should mobilize and inspire every stakeholder to take part in the implementation process to ensure the process is accomplished successfully. Leaders ought to ensure that hospitals’ managements give priority and allocate resources to the implementation of effective systems to guarantee the safety of patients at the various rehabilitation wards in both public and private medical facilities. References Cristian, A. (2012). Patient safety in rehabilitation medicine. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders. Croskerry, P. (2009). Patient safety in emergency medicine. 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