Joint Commission Safety - Essay Example

Joint Commission Safety The National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) were established in 2002 to help accredited organizations address specific areas of concern in regards to patient safety. NPSGs encompass 15 goals and areas concerned include patient identification, caregiver communication, medication safety, control and prevention of health-care associated infections, medication reconciliation, fall reduction, vaccinations, surgical fire prevention, patient involvement, pressure ulcers, and risk assessment.

According to the Joint Commission (2012), the National Patient Safety Goals for 2012 focus on the following: improvement of the accuracy of patient identification through use of at least two patient identifiers in providing care, treatment and services and elimination of transfusion errors related to patient misidentification; improvement of communication effectiveness among caregivers by timely reporting of critical results of tests and diagnostic procedures; improvement of medication safety by labeling all medications, containers, and solutions in the perioperative and procedural settings, reducing harm from use of anticoagulant therapy, and maintaining and communicating accurate patient medication information; reduction of risk from health-care associated infections through compliance with hand hygiene guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or World Health Organization (WHO) and implementation of evidence-based practices to prevent health care-associated infections, central line-associated bloodstream infections, surgical site infections and indwelling catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI); reduction of patient harm from falls by addressing the risk; prevention of health care-associated pressure ulcers (decubitus ulcers) through assessment and taking action of the identified risks; and organizational identification of safety risks per patient population such as risk for suicide, risk of home fires from patient receiving oxygen therapy at home, and incidence of wrong site, wrong procedure and wrong person surgery (n.p). The 2012 NPSGs is applicable to the hospital and critical access hospital accreditation programs with focus on health care-associated infections, particularly catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI).

Falls are the leading cause of injury and death among the elderly. According to the CDC (2012), there are 2.2 million nonfatal fall injuries among elderly treated in emergency department in 2009 and 581,000 of which were hospitalized while 19,700 elderly died from unintentional fall injuries in 2008 (n.p.). The injury and mortality associated with falls among elderly could have been prevented if the hospitals and staff strictly adhered to the Joint Commission’s NPSG of reducing the risk of patient harm resulting from falls.

Elderly patients are at risk for falls because of decrease cognitive ability, age-related factors affecting stability, and different pathologic conditions (Grayson, 2006, 84-85). The goal requires health care institutions to implement and evaluate a fall reduction program in order to reduce the risk of injury should a fall occurs and provide services to specific population. Evaluation of risks for falls include taking fall history, review of medications and alcohol consumption, screening gait and balance walking aids, and assessment of assistive technologies, protective devices, and environments. The