The Role of Different Departments in Promoting Patient Safety

Prevalence of medical errors and mechanisms to reduce medical errors: Medical errors is serious public health issues that leads to patients safety issues, increase in number of adverse events, prolonged hospital stay and increased health care cost. As such errors have an impact on quality and continuity of health care services for patient, identifying the exact mechanism to reduce medical errors and ensuring patient safety is important.

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Nursing
Name of the student:
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Author’s note

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Introduction:
The burden of medical errors is a major burden for health care professionals as it has
adverse impact of patient outcomes and also increase additional cost associated with care.
Considering high incidence rate of medical errors, this paper aims to discuss about the
mechanism to reduce medical errors and evaluate the role of different departments in promoting
patient safety. The patient safety measures will be evaluated in terms of cost effectiveness and
improvement in patient outcomes.
Prevalence of medical errors and mechanisms to reduce medical errors:
Medical errors is serious public health issues that leads to patients safety issues, increase
in number of adverse events, prolonged hospital stay and increased health care cost. A survey
done by Institute of Medicine publication revealed that that number of deaths due to medical
errors is significantly high in Americans compared to those with deaths from automobile
accidents and 98,000 deaths per year occur due to medical errors (Bari, Khan & Rathore, 2016).
There are many causes behind medical errors such as medication related errors, adverse drug
reactions, improper use of medical equipment and inappropriate infection control measures. Out
of these, medication errors is the most widely reported medical errors as medication
administration is one of the routine and high complex nursing activity in hospitals (Jember et al.,
2018). As such errors have an impact on quality and continuity of health care services for patient,
identifying the exact mechanism to reduce medical errors and ensuring patient safety is
important.
Currently, different mechanism exists to prevent medical errors and most of them are
related to patient safety measures. According to Patel et al. (2016), medication errors reporting

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system or implementation of incident reporting in hospitals is considered important to reduce the
incidence of medication errors and enhance patient care and safety. This involves
implementation of appropriate protocols to report about medication errors and bringing
appropriate changes to prevent repeating such events. The main strength of incident reporting
system is that it is a powerful tool that maintains awareness of risk in health care practice and it
has positive effect not just on safety outcomes, but also on attitudes of patients and staffs. This is
because incident reporting system contributes to change in care process and changing the culture
linked to patient safety events (Anderson et al., 2013).
As any medical error occurs because of flawed care process and existence of poor safety
standards in hospital setting, another mechanism that helps to reduce medical errors includes
establishing a culture of safety in hospital setting. This involves establishing a process or culture
that supports in recognizing safety challenges. Such system also helps to move away from a
culture of blame and punishment (Rodziewicz & Hipskind, 2019). Hemphill (2015, June) argues
that culture of safety is an important mechanism for preventing medical errors as it works to
improve safety in the whole organization and motivate staffs to report about such errors to
promote quality improvement. Hence, it can be said that safety culture is not only the pathway to
record number of adverse events at a particular time, but also create an opportunity to identify
and mitigate potential harms for patient. The investigation regarding the effectiveness of safety
culture in hospital setting has revealed that physicians and health care assistants have positive
perception related to safety climate and its role in highlighting areas of improvement, reporting
incidents, analyzing the cause of errors and preventing it (Lawati et al., 2018).
Impact of patient safety measures on cost savings:

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From the above discussion regarding mechanism to prevent medical errors and promote
patient safety, it has been found that establishment of safety culture, incident reporting system
and behavioural and management interventions are critical to promote patient safety and
eliminate any harm to patient. As adverse events and medical errors has an impact on hospital
finances because of prolonged hospital stay, implementation of appropriate patient safety
measures has an impact of total cost and hospital expenditure too. With the reduction in length
of stay, mortality and readmissions statistics through the integration of patient safety measures, it
will lead to cost savings and total contribution margins (Adler et al., 2018). Denham and
Guilloteau (2012) supports investments in patient safety measures in clinical setting is associated
with cost savings as it opens the process of collaboration between hospital quality and finance
departments and clarifying both direct and indirect cost in providing care. Such cost related
savings emerge because of avoidance of infections and medical errors and saving cost of
unnecessary treatment that results because of such adverse events. As patient safety measures
result in collaboration between different departments such as health care staffs, public health
institutions and quality control experts, it results in implementation of best standards and safe
practices for infection and medical errors. Such environment enhanced decision making and
saving cost associated with treatment (Ammouri et al., 2015).
The common process associated with any patient safety measure is that it is associated
with implementation of new patient safety standards, change on overall care process and
implementation of staff training and education. Sánchez et al. (2015) gives the evidence
regarding cost-effectiveness of such initiative and positive impact on quality of life of patients.
In the United States, adverse events and temporary harm events has been the cause behind
increase in inpatient Medicare expenditures and the increase in annual direct costs. However, in

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contrast to this statistics, understanding factors linked with high rate of adverse events is
associated with better clarity regarding patient safety measures and having positive cost and
quality implications. As safety culture relied on communications based on mutual trust and
having confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures, it is found effective in reducing the
burden of patient safety risk and medical cost (Najjar et al., 2015).
Role of various departments in ensuring patient safety:
The Joint Commission is one department that is committed to patient safety. It has
introduced and developed various patient safety goals to guide institutions and health care
practitioners in creating a safe practice environment. The main goal of such patient safety goals
is to identity patient safety risks, confirming patient identity in at least two ways, improving the
communication process and preventing infection by all means. The department also gives
guidance regarding correct use of medications and implementing appropriate process related to
labelling and special precautions for different types of medications. It also recognize infection
control as an important component of patient safety measures and focus on promoting hand
hygiene to reduce the burden of nosocomial infections (Rodziewicz & Hipskind, 2019).. Other
numerous taken by Joint Commission that is reflective of their commitment to patient includes
development of standards related to infection control, safety, medication use, seclusion, medical
equipment, restraints and emergency management. It also focus on patient safety collaborations
by collaborating with various organizations connected to patient safety such as the National
Quality Forum, National Patient Safety Collaborative and the National Coordinating Council on
Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC-MERP) (Joint Commission, 2017).
Personal role in patient safety:

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In the future, I aspire to become a registered nurse. I will contribute to patient safety by
being updated about current practice and guidelines related to patient assessment and identifying
any risk of adverse events in patient. This knowledge will help in accurately monitoring and
identify clinical deteriorations and risk of medical errors, understand the process linked to risk
and follow hospital wide protocol to implement appropriate control measures for patient safety.
As a nurse, I would advocate for safety of patient by not just accepting and improving my
mistakes during care delivering but also actively reporting about any adverse events without any
fear. I also plan to use my collaboration skills to actively engage with patients and health care
professional and avoid any adverse events that occur because of miscommunication. I will also
try to pay attention to high risk group such as older adults, patients with multiple complication
and those with polypharmacy as they are highly vulnerable to adverse events and complications.
Role of chief nursing officer in patient safety:
Apart from change in safety culture and involvement of various public health institutions,
the role of chief nursing officers is also critical in preventing medical errors. This is because they
have a crucial role in formulating new nursing strategies and imposing appropriate patient care
standards. As they are committed to improving the standards of practice nurses and the health
care facility, they contribute to patient safety by improving patient outcomes and minimizing
hospital stays for patients. They implement various metrics in hospital setting to measures patient
care outcomes such as patient incident reports, health care colleague’s complaints and the
hospital consumer assessment systems. They expect nurses to maintain high scores in all these
measures. Hence, it can be said that the chief nursing office is one individuals who develops
required standards to create a healthy work environment and motivate staffs to provide high
quality care (Ingwell-Spolan, 2018, June).

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Conclusion:
To concluded, the paper gave an insight into the different mechanisms to reduce medical
errors. This included establishing a culture of patient safety and incident reporting systems. As
such process helps in inspection and evaluation of overall nursing care process, there is a need to
actively implement such measures to reduce medical errors. The collaboration with organizations
like Joint Commission and the chief nursing officer will help in the establishment of appropriate
care standards and evaluating patient safety outcomes in care setting.

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