Practices to Enhance Patient Safety
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Practices to Enhance Patient Safety
Patients safety and quality may be at risk from several reasons, such as human error. Healthcare is a complicated work containing various systems and processes in hospitals, with each of the actions taken at any point likely to have possibilities of errors that could be devastating to patients. Therefore, the quality and safety of a patient need to be the uttermost function of any hospital, and this is built through proper communication and trust to reduce the margins for a possible error.
One of the things that may undermine patients’ safety in a hospital is the lack of role clarity, where nurses sometimes disagree on the health and risks involved when handling patients (Chamorro, 2017, p. 54). The definition of roles in a hospital is something I would revise so that everyone knows what he or she is supposed to do, to enhance patient safety.
Changing systems in a hospital may not be easy, but when it comes to patient safety, all stakeholders need to come into play. For this reason, the diffusion theory would be a step forward in getting all the health workers to achieve this success (Curtsinger, 2018, p. 43). It can be done by teaching all the nurses and health workers on the importance of patient safety and giving clear definitions of what they are expected to do. The next step should be to get all the health workers to communicate effectively and ensure no patient is at risk.
For early adopters, the strategy that I would use is the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) method. This method. This method is effective for rapid healthcare improvement and the ability to assess change in the sector (Chamorro, 2017, p. 53). It assesses the functionality of having health worker have defined roles and come up with ways to make them work together effectively. Finally, patient safety is an integral part of any hospital, and all the stakeholders should work towards finding ways to work together and communicate well to improve the lives of patients.
References
Chamorro, E. (2017). Handover checklist: Improving surgical patient safety. doi:10.26226/morressier.58f5b034ab9a5f002a4c9c28
Curtsinger, A. (2018). Improving teamwork and communication through the use of TeamSTEPPS. OALib, 05(08), 1-7. doi:10.4236/oalib.1104816