Addressing a Patient Safety Issue

Running head: ADDRESSING A PATIENT SAFETY ISSUE
Addressing a Patient Safety Issue
Your Name
BHA4004
Assignment u02a1
Date:
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ADDRESSING A PATIENT SAFETY ISSUE
In this portion of the assignment, effective risk management principles has been
applied to the above mentioned incident in order to help the organization achieve its
safety and quality goals.
Risk Description
At the Independence Medical Center, the patient safety officer, while conducting her
daily round noticed that there are two healthcare service users with similar name “B.
Moore” and “B.R. Moore” in rooms directly across each other. Along with name, the
patients also have similar birthdates. Moore was born on 8/11/05 and B. R. on 11/8/05.
Hence there prevails a chance of patient identification error which can impose negative
impact on the health of both the patients.
Risks if Threats not Addressed
In case the threat of patient identification error is not addressed on an immediate basis
the following incidents may take place:
Risk of the patient
1. Assessment error: Considering the fact that the health condition and health issue of
the patients are different, confusing one of the patient as another can result in
assessment error. Nurses can confuse one patent as another and the assessment
report of one patent can be confused as the assessment report of another. This
eventually will lead to medication error (Lippi et al., 2017).
2. Medication error: provision of medication to one of the patent, by wrongly identifying
him as another will not only reduce the chance of his recovery but will deteriorate
his health condition. In case of provision of inappropriate medication to any of the
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ADDRESSING A PATIENT SAFETY ISSUE
patent for a prolonged amount of time, there even exist a risk of fatal results like
death of the patients.
Risk of the Employees
1. Considering the fact that the nurses has already been warned about the chances of
patent identification error, further mistakes leading to wrong medication provision
may result in severe punishment, suspension a well as termination of the
responsible employee or employees.
2. Also in case of severe heath deterioration of the patient due to prolonged provition
of wrong medication, legal action will be taken against the responsible employee or
employees
Risk of the organization
Legal action car be taken by the patient’s family on the organization resulting in
deterioration of the reputation as well as revenue of the organization.
Regulatory Agency Role and Impact
The role of the regulatory agency is to identify this type of risk in future so that
the same can be prevented.
One of the most effective strategies includes analyzing the incident report Data.
Considering the fact that an incident report data contains all the details of the patient,
any discrepancy in the report will help the nurse to identify the patient identification error
in future (Lippi et al., 2017).
Implementing these strategies will reduce the risk of such threats in future.
Patient Safety Officer’s Role
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