Patient Safety, IOM Reports, and Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goals, Research Paper Example

From the (IOM) reports, it is clear that many people die or suffer severely from medical mistakes. This is a bigger number of people comparing to deaths from AIDS, car accidents or breast cancer that are the three deadly killers. In response to these issues, federal groups for instance the Agency for Healthcare Quality research (AHRQ) and many other nonprofit organizations like the Institute for Healthcare Improvement help in standardizing many safe practices. This enhances the spread of the word about the significance of patient safety.

AHRQ has released online tools and assessments helping the healthcare organizations in their evaluations as well as improvement of patient safety. However, the application of these tools and standards in hospitals requires a major transformation in all fields. This is where changes in the systems have proven so difficult. However, the whole idea is to set patient safety as the priority of everyone in the medical field. There are many step initiatives regarding the enhancement of safety and they derive from many parties involved.

Change of systems has been a key initiative in coming up with greater chances and enhancing patient safety. Innovations in the field of medicine technology have resulted to complex healthcare. Earlier, there had been many errors made in hospitals resulting to a compromise of patient safety. The difficult of addressing the difficulties is now in the past because of the new technologies introduced in Medicare. A computerized order entry system for physicians is an introduction of the best initiative in this category (Leonard, 2006).

Instant handling of cases on medical errors has also been an experience in many medical institutions. There is a safety approach strategy in many institutions including the emergency handling of cases. Out of desperation, institutions handle cases they cannot handle and errors happen compromising the patient’s safety. In reality, evaluations have to be done in these institutions on the handling of cases. Due to the strict orders from the hospitals administration, there are principles guiding as to the way forward in case of these errors and they handle them in time to prevent the patient insecurity worsening.

Walk Rounds has been another major initiative in dealing with patient safety. Patient Safety Walk Rounds is actually a process by which, leaders makes rounds in their clinical departments collecting relevant information from staff and engage workers systematically to elicit their major concerns in their work. There is rigorous collection of data and analysis helping deal with operational decision. Hospital leaders are making use of those management tools as the best way of implementing many effective solutions for patient safety promotion. With walk rounds, the safety, quality, and operations of the work places becomes excellent (Ann, 2004).

There has been development of a new culture of accountability. This is something the medical personnel are fighting to achieve in everyday of their operations. This initiative materializes with the creation of understanding the adverse way of handling adverse event. Many hospitals are working hard to verse their staff with a better policy with the respective leaders giving it reinforcement (AHRQ, 2002).

There has been a change of policy in many medical institutions to promote safety for patients. The policies govern the operations of a medical institution. In case of poor policing, there is always a tendency of errors leading to compromise of patient safety. The open door policy is the best for medical personnel and many institutions have adopted it in their system (Ann, 2004).

There is also a better way making communication effective in many institutions. The reason why many medical errors occur happens all because of the poor communication in the respective institutions. Patient safety gets a compromise from the collision in the communication field. The difficult times that doctors and nurses experience brings in an element of injustice to the services they provide. It means that change is needed urgently in these institutions to come up with better services. Improving communication is the change available. This is generally what the institutions are using o facilitate patient safety. This is with an aim of fostering teamwork among the clinical staff and the management brings in a safer culture. It has bee the weapon of promoting patient care, allowing the staff to learn effectively from mistakes rather placing blame (Leonard, 2006).

The IOM report provides guidance on the implementation of error prevention strategies within the respective hospitals, ambulatory care and long-term care. This is with an aim to establish and maintain a better provider-patient partnership. The result of all this is reduction of medication errors and promotion of patient safety. The report outlines perfectly how such a partnership can work. It gives the best way to achieve it and the roles of respective patients, providers and third parties in making it a success.

For instance, the report emphasizes that consumers should careful maintain records of their medications. The providers should always review a patient‘s list of respective medications always when making the transitions within the care settings. The IOM also recommends the involvement of federal government seeking ways of improving the quality of online medication-related information and pharmacy leaflets (Ann, 2004).

From the IOM reports, the Health care providers should seek the creation of high-reliability organizations to improve the quality and safety of medication use. In additions, there should be an implementation of active internal monitoring programs. This is to input greater progress in the improvement of medication safety. The IOM report offers major guidance on relevant monitoring systems actually for respective major care setting.

IOM committee did a study to identify enormous gaps in the medical knowledge that leads to respective medication errors. It also facilitated current methods aiding in the generation of communicating information concerning medications. It reported medical errors incidence rates within respective care settings, prevention strategies efficacy of such errors and the costs of medical errors. The report makes a proposal of a research agenda aiming at addressing these knowledge gaps in solving the medical errors problems within institutions of healthcare (Leonard, 2006).

Referring to the latest recommendations done by the IOM report, the medical institutions have a lot to do to realize the goal of patient safety. There has to be changes to comply with these recommendations and make it possible for patient safety. One of the best ways to do this is Electronic prescribing as well as monitoring for errors in all medical institutions. This is very important especially on the side of providing safe medications. It is always important for clinicians to synthesize varying information, including the actual knowledge of the medication and understand how the interaction of the medication with coexisting illnesses before prescribing it to the users. The hospitals will require electronic supports helping these providers absorb as well as apply the information in detail (Ann, 2004).

The institutions ought to develop easy access to Automated Reference Information. With the change of knowledge on healthcare, the medical providers are getting a hard time in conceptualizing the information in the field. The hospitals therefore ought to access critical syntheses of such knowledge. The Cochrane Collaboration (CC, 2005) can be one great source for the hospitals to depend on for this easy access. The hospitals also require software applications. This is purely for the provision of decision support for all the institution-prescribing clinicians. It should therefore support the clinicians with internet connections or personal digital assistants.

Electronic Prescribing is something of value that hospitals must make good use. Paper-based prescribing is archaic. It has been a major source of high error rates. Electronic prescribing for the hospitals is safer and will be a solution to effective recording. It is for eliminating handwriting errors ensuring that key fields have appropriate records. Some of these fields include drug dose, route, name, and frequency. The idea is to have this computerized system.

It is the perfect way of enabling clinical decision support. This includes checks for allergies, overly high doses, drug interactions, and clinical conditions, as well making suggestions for dosages given to the respective patient regarding age and level of renal function. The pharmacies also benefit from this change. They receive prescriptions electronically leading to fewer errors as compared to oral approaches or current paper (Ann, 2004).

Effective Use of Technologies in service delivery is the way forward for the institutions. The delivery of safe drug care, hospitals should make use of technologies in respective service delivery. This is however dependent on the inpatient setting. It is through technologies that improvements are possible in the respective settings. Electronic medication records could spell improvement of documentation on medications. The institutions with therefore have to introduce appliances for instance smart IV infusion pumps and bar coding for the purpose of effective service delivery (Leonard, 2006).

Hospitals also need to develop a monitoring program for errors. This should be an attempt to seek high reliability within the government’s operations. The internal monitoring program is perfect for medical safety for the patient safety. Internal reporting systems are the best innovation to limit the frequency of medication errors. Error detection methods should have the priority over other elements of promoting safety. There should be enhancement of a close follow up of medication passes assessing administration errors. There should also be audits of filled prescriptions so that the community pharmacies develop a close monitoring of dispensing errors. This is something the hospitals need to deal with for fast control of medical errors (Ann, 2004).

One great change in the hospitals that could spell great advance in dealing with medical errors is the adoption of Safety Culture. High levels of safety culture in the senior management of health care can only happen when everyone has a culture of promoting the safety. All resources available must be in place to enhance quality improvement as well as safety teams (IOM, 2004). The senior management also ought to authorize the investment of all available resources in technologies that are relative to safety improvement for instance computerization of the order entry systems and many other electronic health records (Leonard, 2006).

Communication is something requiring urgent overhaul in the organizations. Within the medical institutions, there is a level of miscommunication. This has been the cause of many medical errors. To facilitate a solution to this issue, there is need to value communication tools within the medical institutions. The medical facilities will have to develop flexibility in its systems.

The main cause of errors in the institutions is due to fear of the seniors. Therefore, it requires openness and flexibility in the way the staff communicate with the seniors. This way, the institutions will reduce all possible errors resulting from bad communication as well as laxity in the operations. It will facilitate faster communications strategies bringing in a better solution to facilitation of better services in medical health for the patients.

Even with the proposal of recommendations to put in place for perfect control of medical error control, there is still a major hitch in the operations. The success of the error eradications still faces challenges. This is because of the many compromising issues within the medical field bringing in more requirements and challenges for patient safety enhancement. There is therefore need to have more research on other contentious issues. This is to clear more on what should be done to make patient safety success.

A study on identification of baseline rate of errors is ideal in the attempt of developing an ultimate solution. This is definitely crucial in all circumstances when dealing with patient security on medical terms. The reason why even with recommendations the errors still persists is lack of control for the rate of errors. With an effective study on the same, more revelation with relevance to the way forward in solving this issue will be perfect. It will be a good way of realizing means of controlling these errors and ultimately eliminating them from the system (AAFP, 2009).

Efficacy of prevention strategies with an aim of improving medication safety is in dire need within the hospitals. This includes care transitions, pediatric care, ambulatory care psychiatric care, and OTC use as well as other complementary or alternative medications. It will be ideal for hospitals to realize prevention strategies for instance bar coding or smart pumps. The idea is to come up with means of integrating electronic health records actually with computerized order entry, bar coding, smart pumps and clinical decision support (Leonard, 2006).

Another great study needed involves the costs of these medication errors realized in the medical institutions. Studies on medication errors costs directly relate to hospitals. Having the best understanding of the consequences and costs of medication errors is relevant in all care settings. It is ideal in helping with informational decisions related to investing in strategies for prevention of medication error (AHRQ, 2002).

A further study on efficiency of medication error reporting systems is also great and very important. It is an urgent requirement in the medical field if the patient’s safety is to be achieved. There are so many systems in place to prevent these errors from occurring. However, not all these systems are operational. Some need further evaluations to operate and function proficiently. The research will embark on the prevailing conditions terminating the operations of the systems. The recommendations can be appropriate in strengthening the systems and developing concrete ways of dealing with the systems for maximizing patient’s security (AAFP, 2009).

Another great study required urgently is the study of communication tools used in the medical institutions and the effect they have on the promotion of medical errors. There has been a major tragedy in the way staff communicates in their operations.

Stressful moments arise and the result brings down staff output compromising the way they operate in their various departments. Even with the direct play of the IOM reports in these institutions, the communication difficulties bring down the facilitating of services. Therefore, a clear evaluation study would be ideal to make sure the hitches are noted and recommendations done appropriately to solve the hitches. The application of proper strategies of communication and the input of IOM reports will be ideal in curbing patient insecurity.

The IOM reports are by far very relevant concerning the improvement of patient’s safety. To nursing and health organizations, this is the remedy. It applies in many areas of the medical field. The idea is to have assessments on respective areas allowing a clear perspective of the errors in the medical field (Leonard, 2006).

With the release and implementation of IOM reports, there can be great and positive impact in the medical institutions. Error prevention strategies are the in thing for the perfect solution. The computerization of systems makes a better recording system for the institutions. With many recordings to make on the patients seeking services from institutions, there is need for an efficient way of recording. It has to be immediate and effective. The recording is only error free if it is computerized. This is why the IOM reports applications will deliver an improvement in the systems.

The release of the reports clears enormous gaps in the medical fields. This regards every bit of error causing elements. Some gaps for instance the communication bleach in many medical institutions are withheld. The solution starts well with closing down on these gaps and perfecting the communication.

Ensuring that a flowing communication is within the hospitals regarding the medical staff and the patients give maximum protection and safety to the patient. It is not perfect but adds value to the means of handling safety issues. This is one demarcation of a good start in patient safety issues (AHRQ, 2002).

Internal monitoring programs as reported by the IOM would be ideal in solving the problem of patient’s insecurity. It is through poor monitoring of the internal values that errors in the medication field happen. Through implementation of these report recommendations, it is in order that the systems will be improved. Errors are for humans but through a close follow up, it are possible to control the damage that these errors can do to a system. This therefore will enhance patient safety and improve the services of the hospitals and all medical institutions.

Nursing hospitals have a great chance of enhancing their professional code of ethics in their operations. Since the hospitals must work under these ethics, it becomes quite difficult to sustain their conduct. The medical errors bring in many challenges and they compromise their operations. This is a great chance of involving all means possible to bring back the trust of the medical personnel and improve on their services for the patients.

The overall advantage is the reduction of death rate emanating from medication errors. From the hospital’s point of view, medication errors kill double what the dangerous killers for instance AIDS does. In this context, the reports are a salvage of the extreme conditions. It is to bring down these numbers of deaths significantly. Respect for human life is subject to sustenance bearing in mind the eradication of these simple errors that lead to ultimate death.

References

AAFP (2009). Medical Errors: Tips to help prevent them. Retrieved April 12, 2009, From       http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/healthy/safety/safety/736.printerview.html

AHRQ (2002). 20 Tips to Help Prevent Medical Errors in Children Publication No. 02 P034.  Retrieved August 23, 2002, from http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/20tipkid.pdf

Ann E. et al (2004). The Working Hours of Hospital Staff Nurses and Patient Safety. Health safety, 23(4), 202-212.

Leonard et al, (2006). Make Safety a Priority: Create and Maintain a Culture of Patient Safety. Health Executive 21 (2): 12-18.