Patient Safety Essay

The safety of patients and quality of care are important for the healthcare system. As Ron Wyden stated: “I believe the most important aspect of Medicare is not the structure of the program but the guarantee to all Americans that they will have high-quality health care as they get older”. To provide high-quality care, patient safety must be considered. Moreover, to achieve quality care, the healthcare industry must prevent errors and adverse effects to patients that are associated with health care. All humans make mistakes and medicine are complex and uncertain, for these reasons, the health care system has many things that can contribute to errors and affect patient’s safety (Shi, Leiyu, & Singh, 2014). With this in mind, preventing errors

Safety programs now include a broad range of safety issues. They range from potential or no-harm errors to hazardous conditions and Sentinel Events (The Joint Commission, 2015). For example, medical staff can commit an error called a near miss. A near miss error is “the omission that could have harmed the patient but did not cause harm because of chance, prevention, or mitigation” (Sheikhtaheri, 2014). For example, consider a patient that was admitted to the hospital in a shared room. A doctor comes to prescribe his or her medications but gives the prescription to the other patient in the room. The patient questions the faith of his or her medications and asks the doctor to look again. The doctor notices the mistake and gives the patient other medications. This situation could result in harm and impact the quality of health of the patient and even to the hospital. Patients have an active role in quality management programs, they are encouraged to speak up whenever they have questions or concerns about their safety and to provide feedback about their satisfaction with the services (The Joint Commission, 2015). Risk management and quality improvement programs in healthcare organizations are raising behind patient safety. They are finding ways for the hospital to work together more effectively and efficiently to ensure that hospitals and healthcare organizations deliver safe, high-quality patient care while minimizing errors (ECRI Institute,