Health Care Problem
Patient Safety
As discussed in the previous assessment, patient safety is a key element in quality health care. In the context of healthcare delivery, patient safety is described as the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the procedure of health care delivery and decrease of the risk of avoidable injury linked to health care to a satisfactory minimum. Healthcare organizations must maintain and develop a safety culture to prevent their patients from preventable safety issues. Usually, patient safety culture in a healthcare organization is described as a system that encourages patient safety issues. A patient safety culture also involves adopting proper values and beliefs that should successfully guide the working units, organizational structures, and systems responsible for establishing behavioral norms. This paper aims at analyzing patient safety issues that happen when individuals are exposed to inadvertent harm or injury while receiving medical care within the healthcare setting.
Context for Issues
Within the healthcare setting, patients are exposed to various risks that may lead to patient safety issues. Usually, most of the causes for these safety issues are preventable adverse events and classified into three primary categories: diagnostic errors, communication errors, and contextual errors. Diagnostic error is described as the failure to establish a correct and well-timed description of the patient’s health issue (Kavanagh, 2017). Usually, diagnostic errors form the leading cause of patient safety issues. Examples of diagnostic errors during patient care include a delayed diagnosis. Usually, the delayed diagnosis means the delayed provision of care services, leading to the patient developing severe complications or even death.
Patient safety issues also occur due to contextual errors described as failures that occur due to professionals` failure to consider all the patient’s health concerns when planning care for the patient. Moreover, contextual errors may happen when professionals do not consider the patient’s limitations. For instance, the professional may ignore the patient’s inability to read instructions or independently perform some recommended activities. These activities may lead to missing patient medications or essential activities. Therefore, it is recommended that the professionals understand the client’s mental and physical capabilities before formulating their care plan. Communication errors are also linked to patient safety issues as they may cause severe harm to the client (Kavanagh, 2017). Usually, communication errors between healthcare professionals are the main causes of medication errors or the provision of inappropriate care services. For instance, miscommunication between a nurse and a provider may lead to irrelevant medications and care services. Some of the factors that may lead to communication errors during patient care include limited health care knowledge by the patient, language barriers, and speech, visual and auditory disabilities.
Why the Problem or Issue Is Important to You
Patient safety is an important issue within the healthcare setting, making healthcare professionals remain committed to their professional values. Patient safety also enables the prevention and reduction of risk, errors, and harms that happen to clients during health care provision. Moreover, the nursing profession aims at promoting patient health. Therefore, patient safety enables the professional to learn from errors and adverse events and improve their care service delivery.
Identify Groups of People Affected By the Problem or Issue
Patient safety issues are common to patients who lack basic nursing care, mainly concerning feeding and hydration. Clients who receive a misdiagnosis, mainly due to diagnostic overshadowing and communication challenges, may lead to patient safety issues. Moreover, delayed investigations or treatment may also lead to a patient having safety issues. For instance, delayed diagnosis and treatment may result in the patient developing severe complications, which may influence the patient’s quality of life. Persons experiencing psychiatric issues are also at an increased risk of encountering patient safety issues.
Potential Solutions for the Health Care Problem or Issue
Patient safety is critical during health care delivery as it enables the prevention and reduction of risks, errors, and injury to the patients. When patient safety is compromised, various severe consequences include psychological and emotional stress or even patients. The issue may also lead to a financial burden to the healthcare providers and the organization due to the need to repeat some of the care processes. Therefore, the issue must be effectively managed to prevent these severe consequences. Usually, there is a rapid transmission of information within the health care setting, increasing the risk of errors and delays. As such, the best solutions for reducing patient safety issues may include the use of quality recording equipment and ensuring proper proofreading through the use of quality checks. Moreover, integrating all transcription processes with electronic health records may also help prevent errors.
Requirements for Implementing the Solution
The key requirement for implementing the solution consists of EHR, which is an equipment that helps in the storage and transmission of patient information (Hayes et al., 2017). Therefore, an EHR would help in improving patient diagnosis and treatment and prevent safety issues. However, this solution is associated with various ethical issues, including security violations, mostly when the patient’s confidential health information is accessible to others without permission. The security of the patient’s information can be enhanced through passwords to restrict the persons assessing the information. EHR is also essential in preventing data inaccuracies due to information loss during transmission (Hayes et al., 2017).
Usually, EHR is a complex system that is linked to various failures. For instance, sometimes, the patient’s privacy and confidentiality may be compromised whereby the information is shared with unauthorized persons. Usually, the patient’s health information’s privacy and confidentiality may be improved by educating the professionals on the importance of respecting and implementing professional values and ethics. Moreover, privacy and confidentiality of the patient’s health information may be improved by creating reminders that always remind the user for a confirmation before accessing confidential information to ensure that only the authorized persons have access to the patient’s health information.
Conclusion
In summary, patient safety is critical during the delivery of patient care. It involves preventing the risk of harm or injury to clients by establishing a healthcare setting’s safety culture. Moreover, patient safety involves the provision of high-quality patient care services. There are various causes of patient safety issues. Thus, healthcare providers and organizations must understand these causes and the possible solutions for patient safety issues to promote patient safety. Moreover, healthcare providers should consider all the ethical implications linked to these solutions before their implementation. Healthcare providers should also receive continuous education to increase the skills of using various technological devices and adopt safe clinical practices to promote the patient’s clinical outcomes.
References
Kavanagh, C. (2017). Medication governance: preventing errors and promoting patient safety. British Journal of Nursing, 2017, Vol 26, No 3
Hayes et al. (2017). Pondering practice: Enhancing the art of reflection. Wiley Journal of Clinical Nursing