Patient Safety in Health-Care Settings: Some Pointers

Healthcare Tech Outlook | Monday, May 30, 2022

Tweet

Every year, nearly 444,000 people die due to preventable hospital errors. Fortunately, collaboration among caregivers, support staff, and patients can improve patient safety outcomes.

FREMONT, CA: Organizations can improve team performance through safety-focused team initiatives. Patient safety entails avoiding errors, limiting harm, and lowering the likelihood of errors through planning that promotes, reduces infection rates, and lowers errors.

Patients, care providers, and support staff share the best possible treatment outcome. The seven principles outlined below outline tips that some health organizations use to achieve this goal.

1: Establishing a Safety and Health Management System

Administrators must include all managers and employees in appropriate decision-making processes to encourage compliance with safety protocols and perform regular organizational performance reviews. Systematic reviews provide a dynamic indicator of whether an organization has achieved its intended outcomes.

2: Build a Rapid Response System

TeamSTEPPS, or Team Strategies & Tools to Enhance Performance & Patient Safety developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to aid organizations in planning rapid response systems (RRSs). TeamSTEPPS also outlines appropriate decision-making models for varying scenarios, such as Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (FMEA), Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), and Root Cause Analysis (RCA).

3: Ensure that Employees are Aware of and Understand Safety Policies.

Employees must feel comfortable raising concerns. As a result, effective safety training includes assurances that administrators will receive information with impartiality and a clearly defined procedure for managing and reporting issues.

4: Create a Safety Compliance Plan

Hospital administrators constantly monitor and assess how employees adhere to established policies. Institutional governing boards and directors use this information to adjust organizational policies. Organizations of all sizes promote safe treatment environments by developing and implementing a safety compliance plan.

5: Provide Patient-Centered Care

Patient-centered care is now viewed as a critical framework for establishing and promoting desired wellness outcomes by supporters of evidence-based treatment.

6: Communicate Patient Safety Information

Patients today are increasingly involved in their recovery planning. They receive safer treatment as educated consumers because care providers and health advocates have given them the ability to ask the right questions and identify potential problems.

7: Include Safe Hospital

Designing safe buildings include planning to measure and benchmark facility conditions and characteristics such as ease of information access, noise levels, scalability, and others.

By working together, patients, employees, and administrators can eliminate most hospital errors. However, to maintain a safe hospital environment, planning, commitment, and hard work are required.