Question

Risk is inherent in providing healthcare services. We will always deal with a certain amount of risk as we go about our work of caring for patients each day. Discuss at least two specific healthcare projects, services, or processes that come with significant risk. As CEO of your own healthcare facility, how would you work to reduce risk in these areas?

Answer 1

Two specific healthcare services that come with significant risk are:

1. Patient safety: The occurrence of adverse events due to unsafe care is likely one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability in the world. Some of the areas where patient safety is at risk are:

Medication errors: A patient in hospital might receive a wrong medication because of a mix-up that occurs due to similar packaging. In this case, the prescription passes through different levels of care starting with the doctor in the ward, then to the pharmacy for dispensing and finally to the nurse who administers the wrong medication to the patient. In this situation, a lack of standard procedures for storage of medications that look alike, poor communication between the different providers, lack of verification before medication administration and lack of involvement of patients in their own care might all be underlying factors that led to the occurrence of errors.

Unsafe injections practices in health care settings can transmit infections, including HIV and hepatitis B and C, and pose direct danger to patients and health care workers;

Unsafe transfusion practices expose patients to the risk of adverse transfusion reactions and the transmission of infections

Radiation errors involve overexposure to radiation and cases of wrong-patient and wrong-site identification

Sepsis is frequently not diagnosed early enough to save a patient’s life. Because these infections are often resistant to antibiotics, they can rapidly lead to deteriorating clinical conditions,

Venous thromboembolism (blood clots) is one of the most common and preventable causes of patient harm,

Ways to reduce the risks in such area are:

• Developing guidelines and tools
• monitoring improvements in patient safety
• conducting research in the area
• engaging patients and families for safer health care
• Achieving access to quality essential health care services, and access to safe, effective, quality, and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.
• It is also important to recognize the impact of patient safety in reducing costs related to patient harm and improving efficiency in health care systems. The provision of safe services will also help to reassure and restore communities’ trust in their health care systems

2. Emergency preparedness: An emergency is an event, actual or imminent, that endangers or threatens to endanger life. A coordinated response is required to preserve life and prevent injury. Maintenance of a high-level emergency preparedness poses a great challenge for hospital administrators. The continuous threat of natural and man-made disasters to the public's health requires a unified and coordinated approach to emergency preparedness, based on consistent benchmarks and standards. Nevertheless, the execution of disaster drills on a national level remains a challenge due to financial concern.

Ways to overcome the risk are: Identifying risk, assessing risk, and taking steps to reduce risk to an acceptable level. The risk management approach determines the processes, techniques, tools, and team roles and responsibilities.

• Identifying and analysing the hazards associated with potential emergency scenarios
• Determining appropriate control measures to eliminate or reduce the impact of hazards
• Implementing those control measures, including emergency response plans
• Conducting a post-emergency review of the effectiveness of the emergency response plan.