Patient Healthcare Safety - Term Paper Example

Patient Healthcare Safety Name of student Institutional Affiliation Patient Healthcare Safety. Introduction. Nursing almost emerges as the biggest or widest health care occupation having more the two million nine hundred thousand registered nurses across the nation. This hot "hot" profession progresses to increase in demand thus implying the cause of growth in demand is the availability of more tasks for the nurses. This has also increased the degree of care that students and aspiring caregivers are handled with. After ten years of practice of my profession, I have come to realise that the patient healthcare safety sector still needs much improvement in the nursing department to meet the needs of the patient. In this particular essay, I will try to find out the challenges in the patient's healthcare services, the opportunities available for the improvement and finally the ways to implement the possible improvements in the department. Nevertheless, proofs display that the proceeds have not corresponded to the investments and efforts. Some patient safety Practices (PSPs) have given rise to unplanned consequences, while others have been exhibited to be highly dependent regarding context, investing more efforts in researching while declining during their implementation phase (Woolf, Grol, Hutchinson, Eccles, and Grimshaw, 1999). Patients Healthcare Safety in Nursing A private-public partnership which was founded in 1999 to enhance a national healthcare quality agenda. The coalition included National Forum for Quality and Measurement (National Quality Forum) working together with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The Evidence Based Centre initialized its activities by expounding a patient safety practice as a kind of structure or process whose use decrements the possibility of negative events occurring from the introduction to the healthcare system across the varying procedures and diseases (Jenkinson, Coulter, Bruster, Richards, and Chandola, 2002). This meaning is no contradiction to the prevailing conceptual structure in the safety of the patients, which states that systemic transition will be more than productive in the in minimising the errors in medical practices that will be aiming at and inflict punishments to the individual providers. The definition of this term concentrates on the actions that deals with procedures and diseases. According to Bodenheimer,Wagner, and Grumbach, (2002), It also allows a distinguishment of patient safety measures from the more practices targeting quality improvement like practices meant to increment the application of beta-blockers in patients who are taken to the hospital after going through myocardial infarction). The assessment focuses on the hospital care as a basic point due to the significant risks associated with the hospitalisation. The importance of trust of a patient should always stay paramount. I will also focus on the nursing homes, patient self-management and ambulatory care. Challenges in the Patients Healthcare Safety The scope of the hospitals' responsibility has always been a dual role of ensuring patients are well at the same time ensuring the patients are safe enough. The two role are disentangled as the safety of the patient interest usually go together directly into the healthcare concerns of the patient like hand hygiene, medical errors and change of care are amongst the many concerns. Looking backwards, the year of 2014 gave some insights in patient's safety matters. The Ebola eruption shed light on the unpreparedness of the country for managing outbreaks of infections after a couple of nurses acquired the virus in the process of taking care of an infected patient. Meaningful application of these guidelines is sprouting up the need for involvement of the patient in the care (Koh, and Tan, 2011). The following includes the challenges in the providence of safety to patients: Healthcare-associated infections Healthcare-associated infections have plagued healthcare centre for a very long time both financially and clinically. Procedures involving antimicrobial stewardship and hand hygiene contributes proportionally to the rate and dominion of Healthcare- Associated Infections(HAI) and all of them are progressively perceived as patient safety concerns. By the Centers for Disease Control IN every 25 patients, one contract Healthcare Associated Infections (HAI) while in the hospital and the treatments of such like infections goes for a cost of $9.8 billion which needs the healthcare industry to spend. Antibiotic-resistance With the present prescribing practices, the lack of sufficient new antibiotic development and the acceleration with which pathogens are developing resistance to specific drugs, a condition which causes antibiotics to become useless may become as early than many can recognise. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approximate that two million individuals contract a bacterial infection that is resistant to antibiotics per year while 23,000 die as a direct outcome of these bacterial infections. Since the start of the "Golden Age of Antibiotics" which is the 1940s, the society has come to understand the antibiotics as go to fix without attention to whether they could cure the disease at hand. Preemptive, precautionary attitude adoption among clinicians has also been observed, prescribing antibiotics to keep themselves safe in the event of an infection development. Hand hygiene The basic defence against infections is the least of the applied tactics. In spite of the relative simplicity of washing our hands, compliance to hand hygiene remains the poorest and at the lowest level. Jason Burnham who is an associate director of patient care solutions at Halyard Health, a global medical technology company said that "Hand hygiene has well-documented ties to patient safety, yet median hand hygiene compliance is still only 40 percent, meaning healthcare workers clean their hands less than half the time they enter patient rooms,". He adds that financial incentives are inclining healthcare givers to seek for various avenues to improve hand hygiene. Health IT issues The rise of health information technology matters has been both a curse and a blessing in the patient healthcare safety cycle. At its centre, health information technology is implemented to fasten the process, bring together and examine /analyse data and ultimately enhance the results. Nonetheless, the implementation of information system has presented some other problems, and the breadth of technology reach has not been as long as anticipated. It has created a surrounding favouring human error and patient’s safety mistakes. Tejal Gandhi, CEO, MPH, MD and president of National Patient Safety Foundation says "We believe there is a lot of promise for health IT to improve quality and safety, but new technology also brings new problems." Medication errors Almost 1.5 million Americans undergo adverse conditions because of medication each year according to the Institute of Medicine. This cost the health industry almost 3.5 billion in excess costs. The Mayo Clinic propose that most medical error comes as a result of communication mistakes that may occur between provider and the pharmacist, pharmacist and the patient or patient and the doctor. This is a field where Information Technology has evidenced and proven solutions. Transitions of care The healthcare apparition is a chain of transitions, be it a change of a physician or just physical transfer. When the communication around a patient is not taken as crucial in that a nurse communicates the inaccurate information at every transition of care, an error may occur. The preceding caregiver should leave the succeeding care provider with the essential information to begin care from the start without having to master the chart till the personnel can assess the patient themselves. Workforce safety Some clinicians go to the extent of treating people while themselves are sick. When the safety of the workforce has not assured the patients is also exposed to a greater percentage of being infected with the same disease as the workforce. The safety includes both psychological and physical safety of the employees or nurses. In addition to the intense issues, diagnostic errors are also the common and most costly type of medical malpractice that creates a challenge in the patients' health safety provision. (Coleman, 2003) SWOT Analysis of Patient's Healthcare Service STRENGTHS Highly skilled staffs (clinical staff) Clinics portray strong ethos of frankness, sharing and passion with commitment in increasing confidence of patients Patient are willing to cooperate New information technology to improve the speed of operations(van Wijngaarden, Scholten, and van Wijk, 2012) WEAKNESSES Lack of sufficient number of nurses Poor hand washing hygiene practices Lack of full care while handling surgical instruments Poor care transition. (van Wijngaarden, Scholten, and van Wijk, 2012) Lack of awareness of the patient safety practices among the employees. OPPORTUNITIES Patients participation project can be a tool to examine their views and suggestions. Patient own management to obtain appropriate anticoagulation of outpatients and avoid complications. Quality instruments are present at affordable costs. The cost can be lowered with the appropriate inventory control system for a specific operation. Adaptations and innovations can assist in narrowing the incidences of the adverse circumstances. IT can provide technologies and solutions to care transitions like remote patient monitoring, electronic data sharing and even wireless data aggregation and analysis. Patients can be engaged in the treatment processes and plan. The employee's cab is trained in line with patient safety services. (van Wijngaarden, Scholten, and van Wijk, 2012) THREATS Confidentiality is at a great risk with the introduction of new technologies. The new technology may need much capital to implement. Legal compliance. (van Wijngaarden, Scholten, and van Wijk, 2012) Conclusion and Recommendations Considering the underlying opportunities and challenges outlined. It comes out that the patient healthcare safety has a lot of chances of improving their services to the patients. At a moment when many patients are suffering from lack of proper patient care, there still exist some possibilities of improvements which can be implemented: The administrations should intervene to enhance safe drug handling like policies to deal with areas like preparation, disposal of drugs, administration and prohibition of beverages and food in preparation areas. Biological safety cabinets should be used (BSC) or even compounding aseptic containment isolators (CACI). The closed system of drug transfers should be used. Initial laboratory tests should be carried out and physical examination when an employee is hired and should be repeated as frequent as possible. The healthcare sector should take an initiative to create awareness amongst patients concerning their safety and also train the caregivers and avail them with educational tools to minimise risks related to patient handling. The department should appreciate the new technologies and implement them because progressively employing advanced technologies enhance the quality of care but must be applied concerning cost effectiveness (Helms, Moore, and Ahmadi, 2008). Multimedia Encryption can help enhance the security of an information system. Multimedia Encryption offers images, audio and video encryption techniques and more related aspects like key management (Coatrieux, Lecornu, Sankur, and Roux, 2006). It provides a well-studied, quick and secures conventional encryption options for multimedia applications (Helms, Moore, and Ahmadi, 2008). The industry should deploy antimicrobial stewardship programs to transform the antibiotic prescription activities to reduce the "anyhow" administration of antibiotics and the capability of pathogens to gain resistance to the microorganisms. Increases patients’ engagement at every health care level; patients are the consumers of the healthcare industry, and the industry should concentrate on satisfying their needs. Through patient's engagement, in treatment processes and plans forms a defence against numerous safety matters. Appendix Hospital safety committee structure Components of a safety and well managed patient healthcare system Source: Occupational Safety and Health Administration [Internet]. [cited 2012 Jan 31]. US Department of Labor; [about 1 screen]. Overview of System Components. Available from: http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/safetyhealth/components.htm References Bodenheimer, T., Wagner, E.H. and Grumbach, K., 2002. Improving primary care for patients with chronic illness: the chronic care model, Part 2. Jama, 288(15), pp.1909-1914. Coatrieux, G., Lecornu, L., Sankur, B. and Roux, C., 2006, August. A review of image watermarking applications in healthcare. In Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2006. 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