Open Disclosure

Running Head: OPEN DISCLOSURE
Open Disclosure
Name:
Institution:

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Introduction
Open disclosure can be termed as a transparent discussion of things which may end up bringing
damage or harm to a patient during treatment. The discussion would be between the clinical staff
and the family or caretakers of the patient (Berwick, 2016). The harms may be called
misadventures which may be caused by either technical problem or human error, poor timing
during surgery, accuracy and lack of the effectiveness of care(Collins & Varmus, 2015). The
misadventures can be related to medication errors, procedural errors, surgical complication, and
misdiagnosis among others. Open disclosure addresses all this misadventures to make sure that
the family or the caretakers of the victim are satisfied with the consequences. Open disclosure
brings awareness of exactly what happened with the patient hence bringing a clear picture of the
misadventure (Berwick, 2016).This paper will discuss disclosure in depth tackling the processes,
its purpose, duties of the staff and the management involved in open disclosure.
Why open disclosure is important
As per its definition, open disclosure ensures that openness and timely discussions happens
between the victim and the health staff concerned when a misfortune occurs. These discussions
help improve the staff, patient and societal confidence on how this system answers the patient’s
safety occurrences and are important in maintaining the trust between the staff and consumers
(Elliott et al., 2015) There is a great importance of saying sorry especially when a misfortune
occurs; this helps winning back the trust of the community and also maintaining the name of the
healthcare institution involved.
Open disclosure is a core requirement by the professionals in ethical practices and the
institutional responsibility. Here some institutions give it a mandate to offer discussions for any

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misfortune occurring in their healthcare institutions(Holloway & Galvin, 2016). This ensures that
they would be careful when handling the customers because any failure may result to individual
penalties. Open disclosure also helps the patients go through the process that was carried out
during treatment and understand in depth the reasons why the misadventure happened; through
this the family would be somehow satisfied with the situation and may be comforted during time
of sorrow.
Open disclosure also helps the victims and the patient recover what was lost as a result of
misadventure. Through this process all the costs are identified, analyzed and compensated where
applicable (Collins & Varmus, 2015). It will also encourage the customers since they are sure
that they do not lose both the treatment money and fail to get full satisfaction.
Information about open disclosure given to consumers
A consumer should be informed about any event of misadventure that is; when consumer suffers
unintended damage or harm during treatment process or disability services. Any error affecting
the care of the consumer but has not caused any negative effect should also be addressed to the
customer (Holloway& Galvin, 2016). Notifying the error is useful in later care decisions to be
made. The open disclosure should contain the acknowledgement of what happened, a detailed
explanation of the incidence, how this happened, and where it happened if appropriate. It should
also include what measures they have taken to prevent it from happening in later dates.
A disclosure system should have a clear apology which should be sincerely addressed to the
consumers or the victim. This gives an opportunity to say sorry for what happened. Apologies
bringa comfort to the victim which is a key to healing process. In some cases, apology can be
critical to the decision of the consumer to lay a written complaint for further explanation

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(Holloway& Galvin, 2016).Finally, a consumer has right to be given the contacts of the health
center andthe full information of disability advocate of consumers and also the alternatives for
addressing the complaints.
Information about open disclosure given to clinical staff
Clinical staff are the main personnel that actively takes part in treatment of the consumers. The
clinical staff should ensure that they have given full information to the consumers about the open
disclosure (Holloway& Galvin, 2016).This is by using the knowledge acquired from the top
management about the open disclosure when a misadventure happens. Clinical staff should also
be informed that they should make sure that the patient is protected from any kind harm which
may lead to complications to the consumers.
Clinical staff should also understand that they should be well equipped to be answering questions
during open disclosure process. This would enable them to always be ready to deal with any
complications and also be careful when carrying out their operations (Lamb, 2004). They should
also make sure that they apologize to the customer or the caretakers about any safety incident,
without the blame of the cause events. It is also the duty of the clinical officers to make sure that
any case of safety or complains associating with open disclosure is noted down in the victims’
health care book and to the management system involved.
Senior clinical staff should also ensure that appropriate services are given to the patients when
patient safety occurs to avoid more complications (Lamb, 2004).It should also have information
that the current care is given to the customer as a requirement that leads to disclosure. They
should also be informed to keep the records of the safety of the patients’ happenings or any
complain, open disclosure here is made in the customers’ record.