Question

Understanding that some safety features can be bypassed, what other safe-guards can be put into place in ensure patient safety? Name three methods.

Answer 1

Ans) Patient safety is an important element of an effective, efficient health care system where quality prevails. Here’s how you can break it down:

• Safety has to do with lack of harm. Quality has to do with efficient, effective, purposeful care that gets the job done at the right time.
• Safety focuses on avoiding bad events. Quality focuses on doing things well.
• Safety makes it less likely that mistakes happen. Quality raises the ceiling so the overall care experience is a better one.

- Consider working with a Patient Safety Organization: Report and share patient safety information with Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs) to help others avoid preventable errors. By providing both privilege and confidentiality, PSOs create a secure environment where clinicians and health care organizations can use common formats to collect, aggregate, and analyze data that can improve quality by identifying and reducing the risks and hazards associated with patient care.

- Use good hospital design principles: Follow evidence-based principles for hospital design to improve patient safety and quality. Prevent patient falls by providing well-designed patient rooms and bathrooms and creating decentralized nurses' stations that allow easy access to patients. Reduce infections by offering singlebed rooms, improving air filtration systems, and providing multiple convenient locations for hand washing. Prevent medication errors by offering pharmacists well-lit, quiet, private spaces so they can fill prescriptions without distractions.

- Build better teams and rapid response systems: Train hospital staff to communicate effectively as a team. A free, customizable toolkit called TeamSTEPPS™, which stands for Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety, provides evidence-based techniques for promoting effective communication and other teamwork skills among staff in various units or as part of rapid response teams. Materials can be tailored to any health care setting, from emergency departments to ambulatory clinics. A free 2 ½-day train-the-trainer course is currently being offered in five locations nationwide.