Standardized Safety with Tools and Checklist

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Recommended: Errors in healthcare

The term “safety comes first” or more simply put, “safety first,” is a message that patients not only want to hear, but also want to know is the focus of the professionals that are caring for them; in particular, when they are under anesthesia and have limited or no ability to speak up or lookout for themselves. The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has implemented two initiatives; Rocognising and Responding Appropriately to Early Signs of Deterioration in Hospitalised Patients (NPSA, 2007) and How to Guide: Five Steps to Safer Surgery (NPSA, 2010). Understanding that human beings make up the healthcare professional workforce, it is evident that tools and checklist can and will only be as good as the how people utilize and follow them. Thus, these initiatives “have been developed with consideration of human factors” (Beaumont & Russell, 2012). I know firsthand, that if my healthcare team would have followed these standards, I would have avoided torture, fear, and long term side effects from a routine hysterectomy procedure.

Initiatives in Detail

Rocognising and Responding Appropriately to Early Signs of Deterioration in Hospitalised Patients (NPSA, 2007) stemmed from the investigation as to why patient deterioration was not being acted on or recognized by healthcare workers. The exploration identified a number of failures centered on lack of proper observation and recordings of observations, and lack of proper communication between hospital staff members. The study uncovered concerns from staff members not observing patients at night, to undertrained staff left to interpret vital signs and perform work outside of their level of expertise. It also showed a pattern of little to no communication between medical colleagues ...

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...ntroduction of these two initiatives, there has been documented evidence of reduced incidences. Unfortunately, the human factor is still and will always be an issue. Success in clinical environments will only come if these tools are implemented and used properly, not just as “a tick box exercise” (Featherstone, et al., 2010).

Works Cited

Beaumont, K., & Russell, J. (2012). Standardising for reliability: the contribution of tools and checklists. Nursing Standard, 26(34), 35-39.

National Health Service (NHS) England. (n.d.). Five Steps to Safer Surgery Film [Video File]. Retrieved from http://www.nrls.npsa.nhs.uk/patient-safety-videos/five-steps-to-safer-surgery/

Featherstone, P., Prytherch, D., Schmidt, P., Smith, G. (2010). ViEWS: towards a national early warning score for detecting adult inpatient deterioration. Resuscitation, 81(8), 932-937.

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