Patient safety

Patient safety is growing to be a global health concern.

The need of the hour is “joint effort.

Inappropriate patient safety is the 14th leading cause of death across the world.

Medication errors harm millions of patients.

1. ·         Almost 15% of total health expenditure is wasted in dealing with adverse events like venous thromboembolism, infections, pressure ulcers etc.
2. ·         An estimated 7 million patients suffer from surgical complications every year, which can be controlled by improving patient safety during every stage of surgery.
3. ·         Wrong or delayed diagnosis or the treatment affects a large number of patients.
4.  Though ionizing radiation has greatly improved healthcare its exposure is a cause of health and safety concern.
5. ·         Administrative errors related to systems and processes or care delivery account for around 50% of all medical errors in primary care.
6. ·         “Look-alike” packaging is an ever-present challenge in dispensing of medications.

Many drug names look or sound like other drug names. Contributing to this confusion are illegible handwriting, incomplete knowledge of drug names, newly available products, similar packaging or labeling, similar clinical use, similar strengths, dosage forms, the frequency of administration, and the failure of manufacturers and regulatory authorities to recognize the potential for error.

1. ·  7. Communication between units and between and amongst care teams might not include all the essential information, or information may be misunderstood.
2. ·         Catheter and tubing mis-connections is another area that calls for standardised protocols to protect patient safety. The current design of these devices allows to inadvertently connect the wrong syringes and tubing and then deliver medication or fluids through an unintended and therefore wrong route. 
3. ·         Wrong site procedures like the wrong organ, wrong implant, and wrong patient also occasionally contribute to compromised patient safety. 
4. ·         Use of unsafe injection practices. Primarily reuse of syringes and needles or contamination of multiple-dose medication vials are known to be responsible for this.

Solutions

• Use of standardised Patient Safety Solutions (WHO, 2007)  for healthcare professionals help to prevent potential errors .
• Providing clear protocols for identifying patients who lack identification and for distinguishing the identity of patients with the same name is recommended by WHO.
•   Non-verbal approaches for identifying comatose or confused patients should be developed and used.
•  To avoid catheter misconnections, the best solution lies with introducing design features that prevent misconnections and prompt the user to take the correct action. Another simple approach could be specific labeling of device ports which will help to avoid connecting intravenous tubing to catheter cuffs or balloons.
•  The WHO report advocates encouraging patients and families to ask questions about medications given parenterally or via feeding tubes, to assure proper medication delivery. 
•   To avoid hand-over communication errors, streamlining and standardizing change-of-shift reporting is recommended.
•  Healthcare associated infections can be reduced by more than 50% by following simple yet low cost measures of infection control like appropriate hand hygiene.
•  Precise care and optimal investment in efforts to reduce patient harm can lead to significant financial savings as well as improved patient outcomes.