Healthcare reform guidelines have increased standards for patient satisfaction and healthcare facility safety standards nation-wide. In order to improve your healthcare facility safety and quality, medical professionals are urged to use the following patient safety strategies.
In 1999, the Institute of Medicine released a shocking report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, which proclaimed an estimate of 44,000-98,000 deaths each year owing to preventable medical errors.
Whether or not these results are accurate, they have nevertheless spurred an increasing demand for healthcare facility safety standards compliance, as evidenced by this most recent report published through the Annals of Internal Medicine, The Top Patient Safety Strategies That Can Be Encouraged for Adoption.
What makes these cutting-edge healthcare safety and quality assurance guidelines different from tradition safety standards is the addition focus on interactions between doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff, in addition to the patient.
Related: Top 10 Medical Clinic Trends that Increase Patient Satisfaction
Suggested strategies to improve healthcare facility safety include:
- Use process mapping in designing your healthcare facility, which involves a team effort that considers medical processes from the standpoint of patients, doctors, and visitors alike.
- Use checklists before, during, and after all surgical procedures, and make sure every staff member is compliant.
- Incorporate strict safety rules in monitoring central venous catheter implementation, including ultrasound for guidance and checklists.
- Avoid abbreviating important medical procedures, in order to prevent confusion and error.
- Semi-recumbent positioning should be used to elevate the head of the bed in order to reduce the need for ventilators which spread pneumonia and other infections.
- Impose strict hand washing rules.
- Find ways to prevent “bed sores,” or pressure ulcers for patients confined to bed rest in your healthcare facility.
- Increased awareness of venous thromboembolism (blood clot) prevention.
- For airway humidification, health experts recommend heat and moisture exchangers.