What is patient safety?
Patient safety is fundamental to delivering quality, effective and patient-centered health services. Additionally, it is all about facilitating well-timed, equitable, integrated, and efficient health services. Patient safety strategy should aim at preventing as well as reducing risk, harm and errors which occur to patients during the healthcare provision.
Patient safety issues
They are wide-ranging. There are infections resulted from medical procedures. In addition to this, resistance to antiobiotic, failure to implement personal protective equipment at the right time, diagnostic errors, radiation errors, ignorance to appropriate standards of sanitization in facilities, errors with respect to prescription and management of medications, lack of co-ordination and communication among healthcare staff, etc. are causes.
Steps To Be Taken
- Facilities must follow standard sterilization and sanitization policies in order to reduce number of patient infections. Patient screening and hand hygiene processes should be established.
- Appropriate steps are to be taken to avoid patient injuries in the hospital itself. Sometimes, patients injure themselves during rehabilitation. This can occur while walking around a hospital floor. Proper assistance should be provided to all patients especially those who are too weak to manage things on their own.
- Healthcare facilities which enact standard medication management protocols will see reduced drug errors that can cause serious patient harm.
- Patient safety is not only about taking care of physical surroundings. It is also about protecting sensitive patient information. This can help the facilities to safeguard themselves against potential regulatory issues and also save the patient from financial loss or embarrassment.
- Healthcare organizations should invest in technologies which alert nurses and others to major changes or potential patient emergencies.
- Comprehensive, transparent reporting and data compilation helps to identify some vulnerabilities in patient safety and thus allow authorities to take necessary steps.
- From infection control guidelines to certain safety procedures, every aspect of hospital should be enhanced, upgraded with time. Making required operational changes that contribute to employee safety and patient well-being is necessary.
- Patient safety is a combination of efforts made by all, healthcare staff and patients themselves. There should be effective communication between these individuals to prioritize patient safety. Working closely with each other, understanding requirement of every procedure and being attentive throughout are essentials.
- Protocols of patient safety should be established keeping in mind wide-ranging factors and involving the team of healthcare experts. Such errors can cost patients their lives, organizations their money, reputation and lower patient volumes.
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