Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example

Pre-Module Assessment: Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example

Key Organizations                  

Two healthcare organizations considered for this essay on medical safety competency are the Mayo Clinic and Mount Sinai Hospital. The 2020/21 ranking of the USA’s best hospital facilities ranked these hospitals and their branches among the top providers of unrivalled patient care (Fiore, 2020). Mayo Clinic’s mission is to inspire hope and promote health by integrating clinical practice, education, and research (Mayo Clinic, n.d.). The primary value at Mayo Clinic is patient first. The organization upholds respect, integrity, compassion, healing, innovation, excellence, stewardship, and teamwork. The hospital’s purpose is to establish a healthcare environment free from individual differences. Mt. Sinai Hospital’s mission is to provide compassionate care by facilitating unravelled collaboration and advancing clinical practice in the community through training, research, and outreach (Mount Sinai Health System, n.d.-a). The organization upholds the values of safety, agility, teamwork, and empathy. The hospital’s purpose is to establish a race-free healthcare and learning facility where everyone has a sense of belonging.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

Organizational Resources

From the considered organization, Mt. Sinai Hospital is picked for further patient safety evaluation. The organization shows a deep concern for the patient safety concept in all its activities and system process. In its statement of patient safety, the organization argues that its workforce is committed to providing the safest care for all patients and that patient safety is their priority (Mount Sinai Health System, n.d.-b). The organization has various resources established to achieve patient safety. The first establishment is the training programs and opportunities for its employees. The organization trains employees on the mechanism of providing an optimal patient experience. The institution is continuously upgrading its systems and programs to help keep patients safe so that they heal and recover in an environment that embodies care, empathy, and teamwork (Mount Sinai Health System, n.d.-b).(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

Secondly, the organization has established an effective leadership that facilitates reporting adverse events (Mount Sinai Health System, n.d.-b). Besides, the leadership embodies clear and regular communication to establish the medical team’s safety status and the patients. The hospital has case management officers who ensure that caregivers are guided on patient safety issues and events and coordinate care delivery.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

The organization has also established pharmacological, therapeutic, and technological approaches in ensuring patient safety. For instance, the organization uses antibiotics when necessary to void resistance; ensures blood products’ safety to avoid contamination; fall reduction program to ensure incapacitated patients are, cybersecurity systems and patient health electronic health records systems (Mount Sinai Health System, n.d.-b). These approaches ensure that patients are protected from any unwanted harm or injury arising from medication or system lapses.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

Healthcare Risks

Like any other healthcare provider, Mount Sinai Hospital has been short in achieving 100% patient safety. In 2016, the hospital was accused of staffing shortages which cause heart attacks among patients and delayed admission time for patients who needed emergency care (Bean, 2019). Equally, other adverse effects the hospital was accused of included its inability to control infections and maintaining patient safety, albeit its core value. Bowden (2019) reported that some patients taken to Mount Sinai hospital had a heart attack without the clinicians’ awareness. In the end, the physicians were blamed for some of this death, leading to guilt, anxiety, and even depression on those who were deemed immediately responsible. As a result, some physicians resigned from their position citing, among other staffing shortage issues and inadequate patient units.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

Risk-coping strategies

Coping strategies for patient safety and medical errors. The Institute of Medicine’s To Err is Human, and Quality Chasm reports provided recommendations on patient safety at the turn of the century that most health facilities have consistently adopted to ensure they achieve safe care. Borrowing from these reports, I recommend reporting safety concerns and incidences, standardizing and simplifying healthcare processes, and adopting healthcare technologies as effective strategies. According to Donaldson et al. (2000), healthcare providers must provide adequate resources to analyze incidental reports and establish follow-up frameworks to hold the organization accountable.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

Donaldson et al.’s (2000) report highlighted the importance of providing non-discriminatory systems to enable physicians to report and analyze errors within the organization. In this sense, medical personnel will get the necessary psychological support to overcome mental health effects associated with medical errors (Bari et al., 2016). The consistent improvement in deliberate reporting actions should be encouraged as it’s a significant safety program component.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

Furthermore, Baker’s (2001) report recommended healthcare providers redesign the care delivery system by changing the structures and processes with which care is carried out. This involves the use of healthcare information technology to transform healthcare operations. For instance, telehealth systems can help hospital administration decongest health facilities and offer care remotely while having in-person attendance to the most critical situations. Besides, information technology is critical in managing patients’ clinical information necessary in identifying novel ways of responding to patient safety concerns.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

The statement, “those who make errors that harm patients are themselves, victims.”

The meaning to this statement is that is common for the human being to commit mistakes. Second victims refer to medical personnel who have been directly involved in medical errors. In most instances, medical personnel is at the centre of adverse medical events. Consequently, often suffer mental health issues arising from guilt, blame, and embarrassment following medical errors (Grissinger, 2014). The opponents of the “second victims” concept argue that the concept is trying to disassociate caregivers from the accountability of their mistakes by placing medical care needs above that of the injured patients. In contrast, the proponents of the concept argue that it offers caregivers another chance rather than punishing them, yet it is natural for human beings in every employment setting to make errors.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

References

Baker, A. (2001). Crossing the quality chasm: a new health system for the 21st century (Vol. 323, No. 7322, p. 1192). British Medical Journal Publishing Group.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)

Bari, A., Khan, R. A., & Rathore, A. W. (2016). Medical errors; causes, consequences, emotional response, and resulting behavioral change. Pakistan journal of medical sciences, 32(3), 523.(Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example) https://doi.10.12669/pjms.323.9701 

Donaldson, M. S., Corrigan, J. M., & Kohn, L. T. (Eds.). (2000). To err is human: building a safer health system. (Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)https://doi.0.17226/9728

Fiore, K. (2020). U.S. News & World Report Hospital Rankings & Ratings. (2021). Retrieved 1 April 2021, from (Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)https://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals.   

Grissinger, M. (2014). Too many abandon the “second victims” of medical errors. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(9), 591. (Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4159062/#b4-ptj3909591

Mayo Clinic. (n.d.). Mayo Clinic Mission and Values. https://www.mayoclinic.org/about-mayo-clinic/mission-values

Mount Sinai Health System. (n.d.-a).Our Mission. Retrieved 1 April, 2021, (Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)from https://www.mountsinai.org/about/mission.

Mount Sinai Health System. (n.d.-b). Patient Safety. Retrieved 1 April, 2021, (Patient Safety Comprehensive Nursing Essay Example)from https://www.mountsinai.org/about/mission.