Are Patients Safe James E. Scarbrough III Baker College of Cadillac Are Patients Safe Patient safety is an extremely valuable aspect in the health care. The definition of patient safety is an area focusing on reporting an error, analysis and prevention of medical errors that often lead to adverse patient outcomes. Prevention means keeping patients safe from errors rather than reacting to them. These standards in patient safety inspire the most challenging issues in the health care setting. Reviewing these standards annually and publishing them on The Joint Commission Website, it is a key component to improving health care (The Joint Commission, 2011).
This will also improve patient outcome drastically. The healthcare is a holistic entity which involves both the treatment of acute consequences of poor health the prevention of poor health from occurring (Martone 1992). The more successful the HCO is in preventing disease, the more successful they will be in improving patient health (Carlyon 1984). This goes a long way to prove that disease prevention fits nicely into the mission statement of the HCO which says that healthcare organizations do their best to promote healthy living. Ethically, it is the duty of the HCO’s under the umbrella of the CDC, to design/develop strategies to prevent diseases.
In its 2007 performance report, HSE reported the following statistics: * 241 workers were killed at work. * 141,350 employees suffered serious injuries at work. * 2.2 million people were suffering from an illness they believed was caused or made worse by their current or past work. 646,000 of these were new cases in the last 12 months. * 36 million days were lost overall (1.5 days per worker), 30 million due to work-related ill health and 6 million due to workplace injury.
For e.g. if an individual has a heart attack then in this situation the need of the individual is to prevent them from getting worse. It helps people become experts in managing their own condition, therefore stops diseases developing. Government health promotion initiatives The Department of Health is a government department responsible for health protection, health improvement and health inequalities issues in England. So, in an action to improve the health of an individual the Dept of Health
Identifying and learning from errors by developing a nationwide public mandatory reporting system and by encouraging health care organizations and practitioners to develop and participate in voluntary reporting systems is another strategy for medical error improvement. The third strategy for medical error improvement is raising performance standards and expectations for improvements in safety through the actions of oversight organizations, professional groups, and group purchasers of healthcare. The last strategy for medical errors improvement is implementing safety systems in healthcare organizations to ensure safe practices at the delivery level. To help avoid drug errors, the National Council on Patient Information and Education (NCPIE) encourages us to think about the "3 R’s" — Risks, Respect, and Responsibility— for safe medicine use: Recognize that all medicines have risks as well as benefits. Respect the power and value of medicines when properly used.
Decision making situations arises frequently in health care delivery, and what is deemed right to an individual might be wrong to another person. “The human person not only lives in a world of values but also is able to create values on a personal perspective” (Hermans & Oles, 1994, p. 569). Therefore there is a crucial need for a sound ethical decision making by health care providers in health care organizations. “Health care executives have an obligation to act in ways that will merit the trust, confidence, and respect of health care professional and the general public. Therefore, health care executives should lead lives that embody an exemplary system of values and ethics” (American College of Health care Executives, n.d).
Trust guidelines should be accessible to staff at all times and although must be comprehensive they must also be practical. Bulky or ambiguous guidelines are poor clinical risk management tools (Wilson & Symon 2002). ‘Clinical governance is the system through which NHS organizations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care, by creating an environment in which clinical excellence will flourish’ (DoH 2008). Clinical governance aims to improve quality of care by getting things right first time and every time. One of the key elements of clinical governance is Audit.
In its 2007 performance report, HSE reported the following statistics: 241 workers were killed at work. 141,350 employees suffered serious injuries at work. 2.2 million people were suffering from an illness they believed was caused or made worse by their current or past work. 646,000 of these were new cases in the last 12 months. 36 million days were lost overall (1.5 days per worker), 30 million due to work-related ill health and 6 million due to workplace injury.
Once the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the death toll had significantly risen. For Afghan women, their greatest obstacle is child birth. On average, one Afghan woman dies every thirty minutes due to pregnancy related causes. (Walsh, 2007) The national maternal mortality rate in Afghanistan is 1600 for every 100,000 births, which is second in the world next to Sierra Leone. (Walsh, 2007) Healthcare for expectant mothers was a major issue.
A preliminary total, 4,609 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States in 2011, down from a final count of 4,690 fatal work injuries in 2010, according to results from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) program conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS[1], 2013). The rate of fatal work injury for U.S. workers in 2011 was 3.5 per 100,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers, as compared to a final rate of 3.6 per 100,000 for 2010. Transportation incidents continue to be the leading cause of occupational fatalities, accounting for more than 2 out of every 5 fatal work injuries. These incidents include highway, non-highway, air, water, and rail occupational injuries (BLS[2], 2013). Of the 1,898 transportation fatalities documented in 2011, 57 percent (1,075 cases) were roadway incidents involving motorized land vehicles.