Improving Patient and Worker Safety - Assesment

Running head: ASSIGNMENT ON PATIENT SAFETY PROCEDURES
ASSIGNMENT ON PATIENT SAFETY PROCEDURES
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1ASSIGNMENT ON PATIENT SAFETY PROCEDURES
Introduction
The health care industry has a vast array of responsibilities to perform in short deadlines.
Patient identification is one such stage where the hospital fails badly. To correctly identify the
patient and perform corrective procedures on them is as important as passing the exam. There is
a huge chance that due to wrong identification a patient may lose his life (Masri, 2018). Chances
for wrong blood transfusion, testing errors, medication errors, wrong person procedures, and
surgical interventions are some of the major problems surfacing in recent years.
As per ECRI’s analysis, the point of identification procedure at first meet is 72%, half of
it at diagnostic procedures or treatment almost 36.95% and rest 10% is while documenting the
patient details. It was found out that 7,600 wrong-patient misidentifications were occurring in a
span of 3 years period in 181 healthcare organizations. About 9% of the events were not caught
before time led to temporary or permanent harm, or even death (Stafseth, Tønnessen, &
Fagerström, 2018). Around 45,000 to 97,000 patients die each year in the U.S as a result of
medical errors according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM).
The incident
One such incident surfaced in our hospital that had the potential to kill the patient. A 21-
year-old patient named Frank Twain was admitted for skin allergy treatment on the bed which
was of a patient who suffered cancer. The room number and bed with the name of the old patient
was not removed. This made everyone believe that Frank Twain was having cancer and his
doctor read his charts with started to treat him accordingly. A strong dose of Doxorubicin was
given to the patient. It reacted to the patient and he fainted in some while. The incident alerted
the doctor and the nurse was asked to recheck the record chart and there it was found that his
name on the write band and the chart did not match. This was a near miss if the treatment was

1ASSIGNMENT ON PATIENT SAFETY PROCEDURES
continued for cancer instead of skin disease he as suffering there could have been irreversible
consequences.
Role of Patient Safety Officer
To prioritize the safety of the patient is their foremost duty. They have to follow the rules
and laws of the hospital along with ensuring that the patient receives the best possible care. They
are a support system in the health care facilities; they shape the healthcare services so that
mistakes can be avoided. They train the staff team for prioritizes patient safety (Neyrinck, &
Vrielink, 2019). They design ways in which the staff can report the incidents. They can access
individual staff performance and report the mistakes to the authority or leaders. They also create
policies and procedures to train their staff to ensure that patients receive quality treatment with
no complications.
The reporting of the incident
The senior leaders were informed about the incident. The data of past years were checked
and it was confirmed that this was not the first misidentification case in this hospital history. It
was time to take essential steps to strengthen the procedures. The consequences of procedure
failure are completely bared by the innocent patient. They are at no fault and get the wrong
treatment that can be fatal or irreversible sometimes. Improving the present scenario was
essential for the safety of the patient. This was a clear mistake of admitting the patient to the
other patient records. The patient's identity was not confirmed before administrating medication.
Institutes looking after these issues
National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) is a program commissioned by Joint especially
looking after the national-level safety goals. It was created to look after a matter with high
priority areas in the context of patient safety. Its first work was to minimize the use of