Enhancing Patient Safety- Applying Course Concepts to Address Medication Errors Quality In Health Care
Enhancing Patient Safety- Applying Course Concepts to Address Medication Errors
Quality In Health Care
The primary role of health organizations is to provide safe, quality, efficient, and patient-centered healthcare services. There are many challenges that healthcare organizations face in designing quality improvement programs to provide safe and quality healthcare services. The patient is at the center of the healthcare delivery industry, and all healthcare programs must thus be implemented to ensure that patient needs and preferences are met. Patient safety aims to prevent and reduce patient risk and preventable harm during the delivery of healthcare services (World Health Organization, 2019). Patient safety is essential in the delivery of quality healthcare services.
Safety Issue
The patient safety issue selected for this assessment is patient identification errors. A patient identification error is the misidentification of a patient. This safety issue negatively affects patient treatment, medication administration, diagnostic procedures, and patient recovery. Patient identification errors can result in medication errors, testing errors, transfusion errors, and the discharge of children to the wrong families (De Rezende et al., 2021). Patient identification errors occur when patients have identical names and many similarities to their names, increasing the chances of misidentification of patients.
Associated Challenges
Patient identification has always been an issue within the United States healthcare delivery industry. Patient identification errors result in severe consequences not only for patients but also for healthcare providers. Some of the issues that may result from patient misidentification include duplicate medical records, patient mix-ups, overlay, and medical identity thefts, among others (Ferguson et al., 2019). Some of the cases of identification errors do not result in severe consequences. Patient misidentification happens almost every day in the healthcare delivery industry, but most of these errors get identified when it’s already too late. Apart from patients and healthcare providers, caregivers are also affected by patient misidentification.
Patient misidentification results in treatment delays, repetitive lab tests, and incorrect medical procedures, which negatively affect patient outcomes and, as a result, jeopardize patient safety (Riplinger et al., 2020). In addition to this, it may result in high healthcare costs since patients can be billed for services they may not have received. It can also lead to high costs for healthcare providers since the claims may be denied by insurance payers. Healthcare providers may lose goodwill, have denied claims, unwanted attention, lower scores, and risk losing CME reimbursements linked to patient safety (Riplinger et al., 2020).
How EBP, Research, and PI Can Address Patient Identification Errors
Evidence-based practice is a diligent problem-solving effort in clinical practice that integrates the best evidence from well-conducted research, clinical expertise, and the patient’s preference to make decisions that affect patient care (Reid et al., 2017). Healthcare information technology has become an important player in the healthcare delivery industry, and EBP has been used to develop modern standard protocols and modifications of medical procedures. Many healthcare protocols were derived from medical textbooks, and these protocols were rarely modified to meet complex patient needs. The healthcare industry is constantly evolving and changing.
Healthcare informatics has allowed healthcare to conduct healthcare research successfully to improve healthcare outcomes (Dagliati et al., 2021). Healthcare researchers can utilize and investigate patient information using healthcare technology such as electronic health records. Patient misidentification has been present in the healthcare delivery industry since time immemorial, and this is a global issue affecting patient safety globally. Patient identification errors have adverse effects. Despite this fact, the healthcare delivery industry has not implemented systematic structures to prevent patient identification errors. Through evidence-based practice, there should be at least two patient identifiers, patient identification standardization, and the use of reliable wristbands (Riplinger et al., 2020). There should be the implementation of standard procedures such as correct labeling of surgical tools and the use of operational checklists.
It is critical to conduct research to eliminate identification errors in clinical setups, and there should be at least patient identifies. It is vital to conduct research to determine the common causes of patient identification errors. Research