Blog 1: Health and Safety Issue within the Hospital

     Wonder if you or your loved one was faced with an error or overlook that can cause harm or even death and was never even reported? A major  issue that I have seen personally and has continue to be a constant concern is the increase prevalence of adverse events and lack of reporting. The purpose of reporting or creating an incident report, which is to identify a patient safety issue, with the goal to find the causality the issue and make measures of not happening again (Meyer, 2019).

     Unfortunately, I have seen same incidents occur, with leaders not following up on incident reports or not making endeavors to prevent them. Some healthcare facilities focus on certain healthcare issues and forget about others for example, patient falls are reported always however, readmission rates to hospitals due to lack of nursing education or medication instruction is omitted (Meyer, 2019). Creating increase harm to patients, especially within reoccurring events and lacking a structure system in discovering how many are occurring and within certain areas. .  According to the World Health Organization, the occurrence of adverse events due to unsafe care is one of the ten leading causes of death and disability in the world (WHO, 2019). In a national study, over 90 % of medical errors go unreported (Meyer, 2019). It has even affected our own state, with Kentucky being average in reporting patent safety reports and one of the leading states in hospital adverse events (Chapman, 2021).

Report, Learn, Share, Act, Reviewhttps://pharmacysafety.org/principles/

      It has been an important endeavor that quality improvement technology is needed and with modern provider technology, with the  use in electronic health records (EHRs), the electronic patient safety report system (PSR), data processing that assists in receiving patient safety reports and collecting information that supports further study, and providing electronic summary of swarms that assist in developing solutions in preventing these issues (Tuffrey-Wijne at el., 2013). Understanding what patient safety reports are and their purpose, it is extremely important to mark how they have a fundamental function towards patient care, we embark towards a mission to ensure that all that we care for, is not left or fallen for granted.

 

References

Chapman, H. (2021). Most Ky. hospitals in national patient safety ratings got Cs again. Kentucky Health News. https://ci.uky.edu/kentuckyhealthnews/2021/11/15/most-ky-hospitals-in-national-patient-safety-ratings-got-cs-again/

Meyer, H. (2019). With no national reporting system, volume of medical errors is still unknown. Modern Healthcare. https://www.modernhealthcare.com/safety-quality/no-national-reporting-system-volume-medical-errors-still-unknown.

Patient safety. (2019, September 13). WHO | World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/patient-safety

Tuffrey-Wijne I, Giatras N, Goulding L. Identifying the factors affecting the implementation of strategies to promote a safer environment for patients with learning disabilities in NHS hospitals: a mixed-methods study. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2013 Dec. (Health Services and Delivery Research, No. 1.13.) Chapter 10, Patient safety issues. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK259474/