Healthcare Quality & Preventing Medical Errors
It is estimated that the occurrence of adverse events associated with unsafe healthcare is one of the leading causes of death and disabilities in the world. It is intriguing to know that even in high-income countries about one in ten patients is likely to develop complications while receiving hospital care.
The harm may be caused due to a range of factors with about 50 percent of them being preventable.
This marks the importance of ensuring optimum patient safety and preventing medical errors in healthcare to reduce the incidences of patient harm.
Patient safety as an important healthcare discipline has emerged with the rising complexity in the healthcare systems and the resulting increase in the incidences of patient harm while in the healthcare facilities.
Patient safety is aimed at preventing and reducing the risks and medical errors during the provision of healthcare services. One of the cornerstones of this discipline is continuous improvements based on learning from adverse events and medical errors.
Patient safety is considered fundamental to delivering essential healthcare services. There is a consensus that healthcare services across all countries in the world should be safe, effective, and even people-centered. Additionally, to derive the benefits of quality healthcare, the services must be equitable, timely, efficient, and integrated.
For the successful implementation of patient safety programs, clear policies, data to drive safety improvements, leadership capacity, and skilled healthcare professionals along with effective involvement of patients are needed.
A mature healthcare system takes into account the complexity in hospital settings that make doctors and nurses prone to mistakes.
For instance, a patient might receive the wrong drug due to the mix-up caused by similar packaging. In such cases, the prescription passes through multiple levels of care including the doctor, the pharmacy, and the nurse who finally administers the wrong drug to the patient.
The lack of standard procedures for the storage of drugs that look similar, poor communication between different providers, the lack of verification before the administration of the drug, and the absence of patient’s involvement in their own care are some underlying factors that can lead to the occurrence of these errors.
Having safe and effective guarding processes in place at each of these levels can help to avoid such errors.
Similarly, there are several such medical errors that can lead to serious harm to the patient. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare practitioners need to be aware of the common errors and follow measures to minimize or avoid them to improve patient safety.
You can now learn more about how to optimize patient safety and prevent medical errors by attending our ‘Respiratory Webinar Offering The Mandatory Three Lectures of Patient Safety, Medical Ethics, and Infection Control’ webinar on 10th November from 4 pm to 7 pm.
The seminar is focused on educating healthcare professionals about the common causes of medical errors and how to prevent them. We will also discuss the medical ethics involved in the attitude and practices of physician-assisted suicide in the united states. You will learn about the prevailing healthcare quality and the need to improve healthcare services to reduce the incidences of respiratory infections like influenza, tuberculosis, bronchitis, and pneumonia during our respiratory therapy conferences.
Join this webinar to keep yourself updated about the latest advancements in the medical field and learn effective measures for reducing patient harm related to medical errors.
