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The digitalization of healthcare management, the use of monitoring technology, effective communication strategies, and keeping patients well-informed are some noteworthy measures to improve patient safety.
FREMONT, CA: Many people perceive healthcare institutions as safe environments, but they can hide potential threats due to organizational shortcomings and medical errors, which can cause bacteria and diseases to spread. One in ten patients is affected by healthcare errors, according to the World Health Organization.
As a discipline, patient safety proposes safeguards to reduce the risk of errors, injuries, and infections. To ensure patient safety, the American Institute of Medicine defined certain aims such as:
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Safe, preventing harm to patients from the care intended to help them;
Delivering scientifically based services to all who might benefit and abstaining from providing services to those who are unlikely to benefit;
Patient-centered care ensures that all clinical decisions are based on a patient's preferences, needs, and values;
Providing care in a timely manner, reducing wait times and sometimes harmful delays;
Avoiding waste of equipment, supplies, ideas, and energy;
How can patient safety be improved?
Monitoring technology is used: During a shift, healthcare workers treat a variety of patients. It is easy for the staff to lose track of which procedure a patient requires due to their various needs. Monitoring technology ensures that healthcare processes remain under constant supervision, preventing human error and ensuring patient safety.
Management of healthcare through digitalization: As healthcare management digitizes, significant savings can be realized that can be invested in better safeguards against medical errors.
Unlike paper documentation, which often loses files and information, electronic documentation is synchronized with a cloud database. One can prevent the following with digital healthcare management:
Data duplication,
Errors in documentation
Loss of information
Searching for documents.
A better ability to communicate: During everyday operations or complex situations requiring an urgent response, effective communication between healthcare workers is crucial to ensuring patient safety. All parties involved should receive regular feedback to improve communication.
The best way to ensure better communication is to implement a system that allows health workers to answer calls at any time and exchange information, insights, and treatments. The most versatile mobile phone app for healthcare personnel allows direct calls, as well as an overview of personnel in attendance and the option to establish an assistance call without a SIM card.
Informing patients: Patients themselves are also responsible for patient safety; healthcare workers are not the only ones. Informing them allows them to monitor their own treatment and can help prevent errors.
It is not mandatory for patients to have the same level of knowledge as a health professional about their treatment procedure, but a high level of understanding can be beneficial. Healthcare workers can check their understanding by simply asking them to recall or restate what they have heard.
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