ANSWER:
Patient Safety – Week 3 Discussion
Patient safety is critical in healthcare because it helps reduce medical service errors, which might put patients at risk. Therefore, it was developed to ensure that the policymakers constantly evaluate the rapidly changing dynamics in the health sector, which might lead to an increase in medication mistakes that threaten patients’ (Labrague et al., 2021). Therefore, there is a need to understand the benefits of patient safety to healthcare and its significant contribution to promoting positive outcomes. Further, it is paramount to understand the causes of increasing errors in the outpatient setting to use the available data to restructure it and improve patient outcomes.
Patient safety acts like a guide for all practitioners on reducing common errors while interacting with patients. For instance, it provides adequate data, which enables them to develop more effective ways of handling different cases and gives the practitioners a guide on mistakes they are not allowed to repeat (Labrague & Obeidat, 2021). Additionally, it upskills the nurses by giving them more information on the changing dynamics in the health sector, thus preparing them to work more efficiently with the patients and improve their services. The patient sector is used by management, leaders, and policymakers to develop better strategies for conducting some procedures and ensuring that patients are treated equally.
An increase in errors in the outpatient sector needs the policymaker’s attention to reduce the risk of patients being harmed in the doctor’s office. Statistics show that more than 950 million visits to a doctor’s hospital are compared to the 34 million discharged in a year. The errors arise from wrong diagnoses where the doctors treat patients with the wrong ailments, thus risking their health (Singh & Carayon, 2020). Also, errors may occur due to delays in diagnosis, where the practitioners cannot determine the disease’s causative agents and prevent it from spreading. A patient error may also occur from using the wrong treatment methods and procedures on patients. Thus, this may result from the delay in diagnosis and the inability to monitor the patient’s response to drugs. There is a challenge in following up on the progress and response to treatment of the patients, making it harder for the practitioners to detect abnormal reactions. Hereafter, this risks the lives of the patients.
Labrague, L. J., & Obeidat, A. A. (2021). Transformational Leadership as a Mediator between Work-Family Conflict, Nurse-Reported Patient Safety Outcomes, and Job Engagement. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 54(4), 493-500. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12756
Labrague, L., Al Sabei, S., Al Rawajfah, O., AbuAlRub, R., & Burney, I. (2021). Interprofessional Collaboration as a Mediator in the Relationship Between Nurse Work Environment, Patient Safety Outcomes and Job Satisfaction among Nurses. Journal of Nursing Management, 30(1), 268-278. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.13491
Singh, H., & Carayon, P. (2020). A Roadmap to Advance Patient Safety in Ambulatory Care. JAMA, 324(24), 2481-2482. Retrieved from doi:10.1001/jama.2020.18551
QUESTION:
Discussion Questions:
1. Identify the role of patient safety and its influence on federal initiatives that are used to prevent unintentional death as a result of medical mistakes.
2. The majority of health care errors occur in inpatient settings. Errors are becoming increasingly common in outpatient settings. Discuss at least two (2) reasons for the increasing errors in outpatient settings.
Please make sure you are using scholarly references and they should not be older than 5 years. Your posts/references must be in APA format.
