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- BHA FPX 4004 Assessment 1 Evolution of the Hospital Industry
Address a Patient Safety Issue
Managing patient safety issues in healthcare is a critical area because they address the patient, who is the customer of the hospital. Confining the provisions of safety rules to the letter reduce the possibility of medical mistakes, bad events and harm to people in care.
By prioritizing patient safety, the healthcare organizations enhance ethical standards and the quality of care, as well as the latter’s outcomes. It also brings the culture of accountability and learning in the healthcare system that saves lives and fosters confidence in the system (Rangachari & L. Woods, 2020). As it is known, this evaluation aims to examine the issues concerning patient safety and its related aspects of recognition.
Health Care Safety Imperative
Any error that can be committed during assessment of patients mostly at the infant’s section of Independence Medical Center was perceived as compromising patient safety in the Vila Health exercise. Namely, two of the authors’ names and birthdates – those are B.
Moore and B. R. Moore – are close in spelling, which raises the likelihood of such an error occurring. There are actions taken to ensure that each patient does not be attended by the same nurse, but these are still worrying because the markers are really alike. Action is needed and desired, the unit would address it properly and achieve success if it got in-service training.
In terms of the functionality in that sector, the best things to do would be to check the process of room assigning and ensure the staff complies with the patient recognition policy. Mistakes that are made in patient identification can have very huge consequences on both the healthcare organization as well as the patient.
Such impacts can involve medication errors and increased costs of care as well as the deterioration of an individual’s general wellbeing and reduced reliance on healthcare facilities (Alrabadi et al. , 2021). The main reason why reviews must be made and the staff trained, and risk control measures taken, is to prevent cases that may harm the patients, or harm the reputation of the healthcare organization.
In case the patient identifying problem is left unresolved, it is likely to have negative impacts on both the people and the healthcare firm. Hence, the possibility of drug errors, procedure errors, and even a drop in patient’s safety will rise if nobody will extend a helping hand. Msiska et al. (2023) have shown that this can increase hospitalization time, total cost of treatment, and the patients’ level of satisfaction.
In addition, they could also attract the close control and inspection of the regulators, face fines or be stripped of that approval over a certain period which is very damaging to the image and trust of the whole group in the society. To reduce these risks and maintain the highest levels of patient satisfaction and safety, it is critical to act as soon as possible and make such changes as personnel training and protocol enhancement (Patel et al., 2021).
Risks If Threats Are Not Addressed
Suppose that issues that endanger patient security, for example, mistaken identity of a patient in the infant sector, are not controlled fast. Otherwise, there are big risks to the patients, workers, and the company in that case. A patient can receive wrong treatment or medication, general health is likely to worsen, or bad things may happen to them due to confusion or mistaken identity.
This may result in increase in the time people spend in hospitals, poor health outcomes or death. The employees stand at risk of developing high levels of stress and anxiety because of what may happen if a mistake happens and performing additional work because of the regimes which requires them to go through additional steps (Amin, 2020).
For instance, Adedayo (2023) opines that the group may be at risk of losing its license; a good name; and money, which has ensued from law suits and government fines.
It is very important to keep the patient’s safety as the topmost priority, as the healthcare safety imperative emphasizes. However, it emphasizes that one has to do risk assessment before the situation occurs, look at it constantly, and act fast in order to mitigate risks and prevent harm.
As for the specificity of the tasks related to the mistake made within the patient identification process, it only takes a couple of days to identify three potentially fatal errors, so it cannot be considered irrelevant – quite the opposite, it has to be addressed right away. As part of the process, it calls for staff awareness, alterative in the process, and vigilance that customers are correctly identified and served. Clinics and hospitals therefore have a social responsibility to ensure safety of the patients and maintain the trust and welfare of all stakeholders through compliance with this rule (Martinelli, 2020).
BHA FPX 4004 Assessment 1 Evolution of the Hospital Industry
In America, there are various agencies that monitor patients’ safety and health care services’ quality, especially in cases of wrong patient identification. These are three well-known agencies:These are three well-known agencies:
- The Joint Commission (TJC) in short: TJC is one of the leading HTM organizations that sets measures as well as come and verify if they have been complied with. These standards involve the rules concerning the patient identification (Chechel et al. , 2023) to ensure that patients are protected and receiving compassionate care.
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): The CMS oversees the Medicare and the Medicaid programs and ensures that any health care facility that receives funds from these two programs complies with policies in place that protect the patient and enhances the quality (Abdelmalak et al. , 2022).
- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): The principal task of the AHRQ is to enhance healthcare by making it safer, better, more efficient, and more successful. HSAG provides groups in healthcare academic information on patient safety studies, methods, and steps in an effort by reducing errors in patient identification (Fischer & Wick, 2020).
Regulatory Agency Role and Impact
Patient safety is considered to be a high priority in most healthcare organisations; agencies responsible for the regulation of HC practice also strongly influence the configuration and monitoring of the programs in this area.
The National Patient Safety Goals by the Joint Commission can be considered an example of clear rules/standards that can make patient safety better. The Joint Commission requires that at least two patient names be used to confirm identity’s credibility to provide efficient and effective care to a patient (Holm, 2022).
These laws pose a big influence on the patient safety programs in organizations due to the clear guidelines and instructions provided. To answer this question, healthcare groups ensure that the process of reporting and investigating adheres to the set rules by the government institutions.
They often give regulations and guidelines meeting what the government promulgates. For instance, they establish guidelines for defining patients, and for documenting and investigating adverse events selectively when they occur (Vaismoradi et al. , 2020).
This reveals that healthcare groups ensure they are doing things that are normal considering the norms set by the governmental bodies and in the process enhance the safety of all patients. And it also makes group decrease risks, increase care’s quality and at the same time protect their approval indicating that they are concerned with patient safety and rules compliance.
If the problem of mistakes in identity is not corrected by the management of the hospital, then it can be very disastrous to patients, staffs and the business in large. According to (Newman-Toker et al. , 2023), patients with confused identity are prone to having wrong diagnosis, wrong treatments or in the extreme case, wrong or harm or death.
Employees’ morale could diminish, their work load increase, and they could face stiff legal backlash. An unfavorable consequence that the organization might face is the loss of the trust of the patients and other significant people, fines from regulators, and monetary obligations in a lawsuit (Vogus et al. , 2020). As a general rule, lack of handling threats to patient safety consequences jeopardize the health of everybody and affect the hospital’s reputation and the possibility to remain opened.
Role of the Patient Safety Officer
It was found that patient safety officers are very useful for the healthcare groups that genuinely intend to implement the patient safety strategies. They are accountable for developing strategies for improving patients’ safety and reducing risks while executing and assessing these plans.
In this case, as the patient safety officer at independence medical center, there were several vital things that I was supposed to do. First, I would focus my attention to the issue that was witnessed in the juvenile area, that is the identification of patients. In this evaluation, one would review the rules and procedures concerning the rest and interview personnel to determine change areas.
Second, I would engage individuals or groups from other fields to develop and implement specific operations for addressing the reported safety threat. This can range from on-job training of teaching workers how to correctly identify patients before attending to them, alter the manner in which rooms are assigned to ensure consistent safety measures, or ensuring that the safety measures that are in place are followed to the letter even when changes in the shifts have been made.
For instance, in the case at hand, one intervention would be creating awareness to the teaching staff on how to properly identify patients. This way, it guarantees that not a single servant knows how to commit errors in the identification of a patient (Lively et al. , 2020).
Also, maintain strong collaboration with the unit leadership to monitor the progress, reception of feedback and make changes to the developed patient safety plan as and when required for the optimization of risk reduction and enhancement of patient outcomes(Newman et al. , 2021). Being a patient safety officer, it means that I am to ensure that the company, we have this safety mindset into the organisation and constant improvement.
Evidence-Based Best Practice Tools
Thus, to address more or abolish threats to patient safety resulting from identification errors effectively, you require a standard five-point plan with standard practices that have been proved to be effective.
First, the approach of incorporating the barcode tracking system at various stages of the patient’s clinical cycles can greatly assist in the identification process. This particular technology guarantees that the correct patient receives the right medicine or treatment reducing the risk of errors. (Alli and MD, 2021).
Second, certain protocols on the identification of patients should be developed and be implemented consistently on all shifts and units. Such rules should also require at least two different check points of the patient’s data, for example, name and date of birth, before administering any treatment or process (Ting et al. , Riplinger et al. , 2020).
Third, proper orientation activities should be conducted to help the members of the staff to know how to identify patients for such facilities and tests should be conducted frequently. This will assist people to stick to the set guidelines whilst at the same time improving safety knowledge within the community. This training should include the best way to capture and review the patient’s information (Jones et al. , 2021).
Fourth, the reporting methods have to be easily accessible for all the staff to find and report the errors or near-miss occurrences efficiently. This makes people more likely to be protective and find the gaps in the system before they reoccur, and thus, be fixed (Deserno et al. , 2022).
Finally, one more activity that would involve diversed teams would be to make the different teams go for safety rounds frequently in order to identify various possibilities that may pose safety threats in the future. In their study, Duffy et al. (2023) identify these rounds as providing an opportunity to observe whether the methods for identifying patients are being complied with, to identify gaps in the system, and to institute targeted efforts to reduce the risks.
Organizing all these practices that are based on evidences in to five precise points is very helpful so that reduction or complete elimination of the risks to patient safety due to recognition mistakes are eliminated by the healthcare organizations.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the rectification of issues with the patient’s safety requires a multifaceted strategy integrating technology, standardization of processes, staff training, recorded incidents reporting, and continuous monitoring. Healthcare organizations are capable of reducing risks and safeguarding patients’ health, if they establish effective measures that produce best outcomes and promote a safety culture. Being a health care professional means that one needs to be vigilant oftentimes, unattached and ready to share responsibilities in order to ensure patient protection as well as delivery of quality services as expected.
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BHA FPX 4002 Assessment 1 Evolution of the Hospital Industry
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