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Health care system in the USA
Patient safety about
Current status of electronic health records
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Introduction
The safety of patients is a critical component in ensuring timely recovery. Thus, patient safety is the process by which medical practitioners seek to reduce or otherwise eliminate medical errors that adversely affect the safety of a patient (Corrigan, 2012). This involves healthcare practitioners emphasizing on the need to have proper reporting and analysis procedures when recording an event (Gogan, Baxter, Boss, & Chircu, 2013). The mechanisms used by America compares with those used in other developed countries such as Canada, Spain, United Kingdom and Australia. The paper discusses the safety of American healthcare system in comparison with United Kingdom.
Patient Safety
The U.S. Healthcare System
The adoption of patient safety as a critical healthcare discipline has seen patients receiving safe and reliable medical care. In the U.S., this discipline was introduced in the 1990s when the number of patient dying out of medically related error was increasing at an alarming rate (Jeffers, Searcey, Boyle, Herring, Lester, Goetz-Smith et al., 2013). Consequently, the government initiated a program to ensure healthcare professionals and equipment provides good care to patients. This program included heightening public knowledge on public safety, use of technology, and evidence-based medication (Sheps & Cardiff, 2011).
According to Vincent (2011), technological improvement in health centers reduces adverse healthcare events, lowers medical errors and improves care quality. The government has implemented Electronic health record (EHR) as part of health information technology to reduce the time taken in attending to patients. HER system has applications in drug prescription, emergency, laboratory tests, and general medicat...
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...u, A. M. (2013). Handoff processes, information quality and patient safety. Business Process Management Journal, 19(1), 70-94. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14637151311294877
Jeffers, S., Searcey, P., Boyle, K., Herring, C., Lester, K., Goetz-Smith, H., & Nelson, P. (2013). Centralized video monitoring for patient safety: A Denver health lean journey. Nursing Economics, 31(6), 298-306. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1477880055?accountid=45049
Sheps, S. B., & Cardiff, K. (2011). Patient safety: A wake-up call. Clinical Governance, 16(2), 148-158. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14777271111124509
Sultz A. H. & Young, M. K. (2010). Health Care USA. BL: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Vincent C. (2011). Patient Safety. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Winter E. R. (2013). Unraveling U.S. Health Care: A Personal Guide. LH: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Wekesser, Carol. Health Care in America: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA. Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1994.
Niles, Nancy J. Basics of the U.S. Health Care System. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2011. Print.
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Shi, L., & Singh, D.A. (2008). Delivering healthcare in america. Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
In our organization we have had many revisions to our safety process. Originally, it was at our hospital that the 1996 well known “Willy King” incident, about the amputation of the “wrong” leg occurred. As a response to the incident, we were required to develop a root-cause-analysis and develop a plan to avoid similar situations in the future. We were one of the first hospitals to establish a “safety process” in the surgical environment. Through inter-disciplinary collaborati...
Niles, N. J. (2011). Basics of the U.S. health care system. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.
Safety is a primary concern in the health care environment, but there are still many preventable errors that occur. In fact, a study from ProPublica in 2013 found that between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year suffer preventable harm in the hospital (Allen, 2013). Safety in the healthcare environment is not only keeping the patient safe, but also the employee. If a nurse does not follow procedure, they could bring harm to themselves, the patient, or both. Although it seems like such a simple topic with a simple solution, there are several components to what safety really entails. Health care professionals must always be cautious to prevent any mishaps to their patients, especially when using machines or lifting objects, as it has a higher
Safety is focused on reducing the chance of harm to staff and patients. The 2016 National Patient Safety Goals for Hospitals includes criteria such as using two forms of identification when caring for a patient to ensure the right patient is being treated, proper hand washing techniques to prevent nosocomial infections and reporting critical information promptly (Joint Commission, 2015). It is important that nurses follow standards and protocols intending to patients to decrease adverse
Reese, Philip. Public Agenda Foundation. The Health Care Crisis: Containing Costs, Expanding Coverage. New York: McGraw, 2002.
Patient safety is a major issue in health care, especially in the public sector. Studies show that as many as 10 patients get harmed daily as they receive care in stroke rehabilitation wards in hospitals in the United States alone. Patient safety refers to mechanisms for preventing patients from getting harmed as they receive health care services in hospitals. The issue of patient safety is usually associated with factors such as medication errors, wrong-site surgery, health care-acquired infections, falls, diagnostic errors, and readmissions. Patient safety can be improved through strategies such as improving communication within hospitals, increasing patient involvement, reporting adverse events, developing protocols and guidelines, proper management of human resources, educating health-care providers on the need for patient protection, and commitment of the leadership to the task. This paper talks about patient safety and how it can be improved in stroke rehabilitation wards of both public and private hospitals.
Mitchell, P. H. (2008). Defining patient safety and quality care an evidence-based handbook for nurses. Rockville,Maryland: Hughes. DOI: //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2681/
However, the reasons regarding these errors can be improved the truth is that errors do occur, and that is tragic although solutions can be made. Some factors contributing to these errors include polypharmacy, constant interruptions while medication preparation or administration is being conducted, along with under reporting incident slips which lead to future errors of the same nature since correction did not occur (Anderson, 2011). The nurse has a responsibility to progress improvements in risks that could impact patient safety by reporting any and all ineffective protocol that has been applied. However, this may not be completely followed through by the nurse due to fear of disciplinary action, guilt, liability of lawsuits, along with having lack of recognizing a medication error or an anonymous error-reporting system (Anderson, 2011). As many more safety and quality problems have surfaced over time some improvements have been created to secure patient safety, yet these improvements are also constant analysis to fine tune any future breaks in the
The rate of errors and situations are seen as chances for improvement. A great degree of preventable adversative events and medical faults happen. They cause injury to patients and their loved ones. Events are possibly able to occur in all types of settings. Innovations and strategies have been created to identify hazards to progress patient and staff safety. Nurses are dominant to providing an atmosphere and values of safety. As an outcome, nurses are becoming safety leaders in the healthcare environment(Utrich&Kear,
Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency coordination task force with the help of government agencies. These government agencies are responsible for making health pol-icies regarding patient safety to which every HCO must follow (Schulman & Kim, 2000).
Patient safety is a crucial component within the nursing discipline and is of utmost importance in health care. According to Kirwan, Matthews and Scott’s quantitative nursing research article, The impact of the work environment of nurses on patient safety outcomes: A multi-level modelling approach, published in 2013 in the International Journal of Nursing Studies, contributing factors that may have an impact on patient safety may include the nurse’s work environment as well as the nurse’s education level (Kirwan, Matthews, Scott, 2013). This article has relevance in the nursing discipline across health care settings and is important to this writer’s nursing practice to reinforce the importance of the work environment and nursing