Question

Discuss the current patient safety characteristics used by your current workplace or clinical site. Identify at least three aspects of your workplace or clinical environment that need to be changed with regard to patient safety (including confidentiality), and then suggest strategies for change.

Answer 1

When it comes to a hospital and patient care, 'patient safety' is a common term comes up. Safety of the Patient is important as much as the treatment provided to cure the disease. According to World Health Organisation(WHO), patient safety is defined in a very simple term to prevent errors and adverse effect on the patient due to a hospital stay. As the importance of patient safety increased, the complexity of maintenance also increased. Even though we understand the importance of patient safety, there is a chance for 'unexpected" errors take place at any level of healthcare settings.

The current safety measures used in my area of work is listed below

- Maintaining a proactive risk assessment chart - This helps us to Identify the vulnerable patient at risk. By doing so, we remain more alert and allow to formulate the care according to it.

- Standard measures to prevent hospital-acquired infection - We take all possible steps to prevent infection In our work area. We have infection control team monitoring each area of work to ensure the standard of practice. Handwashing before and after the patient visit is ensured. The team make sure that all the staffs do practice in differentiating and storing the hospital waste in its allocated bin. A hand sanitizer is placed in each patient side and in the nurse's station to avoid any possible cross infection.Posters and pamphlets are circulated through the area for understanding.

- Frequent monitoring of the standard of care delivered by the staffs- A team leader is allocated to observe the care we deliver. This is to ensure to deliver high-quality care to the patients with minimal risk.

- Identify vulnerable patient and to strategise care according to it. - An initial assessment is done by the staff to understand the patient.

- Patient identification safety - A patient id band provided to each patient mentioning his age, name, bed, number, blood group.

- Safe infusion practice - To avoid pain and discomfort to the patient due to the insersion of IV LINE, we do a periodic check for any iv relation infection in the pricking site and follow a safe iv infusion practice as per protocol that includes to flush the iv line after drug administration and to maintain a record of any signs of infections.

- Drug administration safety - To avoid a meidcation error we do take extra precaustion while administering the medication. it is done by Addressing the patient by his/her name, cross-checking the id band and talk to the patient calling by his/her name etc. After cross-checking, the medicine is administered witnessed and Acknowledge by another staff followed by reports and records of medication administration.

- Consent - A consent is obtained before any procedure. it is done by Obtaining a consent prior to any minor or major procedure including shifting the patient to another room, blood transfusion, administering of high dose antibodies, catheterisation, Ryles tube insertion, testifying by the patient signature( if he is fit to give ) along with the witness signature counter verified by the treating doctors signature.

There are few aspects related to patient safety I have noticed and would like to suggest few strategies for change, they are

PROTECTING PATIENT PERSONAL INFORMATION - Even though we are keen to maintain a strict policy of not sharing the patient information with anybody, there are certain loopholes that be filled in order to achieve this. There are two records maintained in our workplace - one is a computer-generated record of maintaining and storage, another one in the storage of the hard copies, where too many people have the access to the records within the hospital. I suggest that in order to minimise the intrusion of privacy of the patient, the access to the record should be given to the team of two people where the first incharge will be responsible for any sort of informaion passed out from the record. By minimising the access to the patient information helps to keep the data safe from misplacements and protects the patent information

FALL PREVENTION- A fall can happen to anyone especially the person if he is weak, physically and emotionally. It is not limited to the vulnerable patients( aged, physical disabled etc). a longer stay in bed can also cause sudden disorientation that may lead to an accidentle fall. I feel we should give equal importance to every patient who is lying in the bed not only limited to high-risk patients.

The risk of fall can be prevented by these few simple steps,

• encourage the patient to ring the bell to the consecutive staff for support if he wants to move out from the bed.
• allow to be acomponied by a care staff even he is healthy for a walk.
• explain to the patient regarding the rights and responsibility and the services offered by the staffs.

FIRE SAFETY - Another aspect I have noticed is the lack of knowledge of the patients and the staffs to face an unexpected event if occurred. Knowledge and the ability to understand the use of right equiments at the time of NEED is the very crucial step in case of sudden emergency.

- conduct drills for the staffs for fire safety

- give training and refresh the training by doing a mock test, surprise drills

- give orientation to the staffs regarding the storage and accessibility of safety equipment and use of it

- give orientation regarding the various signs and symbols and its meaning of fire safety programme

- give orientation to the staffs regarding the placement of various fire escape rooms, fire extinguisher also to unlock the water supply in case of emergencies.

- KEEP THE STAFF READY TO FACE ANY UNEXPECTED SITUATION BY GIVING CONSTANT TRAINING.