Clinical Integration Specialty Practice: Patient Safety and Confidentiality in Mental Health Care

CLINICAL INTERGRATION SPECIALTY PRACTICE
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Part A
Module 1: Clinical Integration field Practice
Mental health professionals have the potential of having a big and long-lasting impact on the
health outcome of the aging group. Their presences, as well as their sound knowledge, allow them to play a
significant role in patients’ safety and confidentiality (Ammouri et al., 2015). This paper seeks to discuss
mental health practitioner’s vigilance towards patient’s safety, confidentiality as well as how the issues
impact their career.
Individuals with mental health issues are faced with distinctive patient safety issues in the
course of healthcare provision. These issues have however remained too many healthcare providers
specialized in caring for mental health patients. Some of the most common issues confronting these patients
include aggressive behavior and violence, suicide and self-harm, seclusion and restraint use and
Absconding. All these have a bearing on mental health care provision (Dewa et al., 2018). It is therefore
important for health care providers dealing with mental health patients to understand such factors which
may come from patient’s interaction with the system or from the system itself. This is important in
improving the quality of care and maintenance of patient safety.
Mental health patients often develop behavioral health issues that may lead them to act violently
or seek to cause harm to themselves or those around them. For example, among the elderly, some may even
try committing suicide. These safety issues among mental health patients arise as a result of mental illness
issues such as alcohol use, anxiety, and depression(Dewa et al., 2018). Safety in healthcare systems means
preventing harms to patients, their families as well as their friends. Safety also means protecting the
healthcare professionals, volunteers and everyone whose work brings them to healthcare care environment
(Ammouri et al., 2015). Therefore, nurses in particular, as well as other health care workers, have a role to

play towards patient’s safety. Over times, the nurses have come up with new roles and unrecognized greater
responsibilities.
The meaning of patient safety has come up from the abstract health care movement, though with
different approaches to more tangible important components. Ideally, patient safety was explained by the
IOM as the protection of harm to all patients. A lot of emphases is laid on the care delivery system which is
meant to protect errors and learns from the happening errors (LaSala & Nelson, 2005). Moreover, the health
care delivery system is grounded in a society of safety involving patients, organizations as well as
healthcare professionals. Patient safety involves prevention from any harm within the health care system.
Lack of safety may lead to permanent or temporary impairment of psychological or physical
body structure or function. Nurses are expected to find ways that prevent patients harm and promote patients
safety. Ideally, lack of safety in towards patients is led by a communication failure between the practitioners
and the sick person, typing errors, failure in tracking, and improper usage of resources, improper delegation
and wrong referral (LaSala & Nelson, 2005). Different harms, as well as errors, are grouped according to
their domain or where they took place across the range of health care settings and providers. Different harms
are caused by latent failure, active failure, technical failure as well as an organizational system failure.
Technical failure involves the breakdown of external resources or facilities whereas active failure, involves
direct contact with the sick person. On the other hand, organizational system failure involves management,
knowledge transfer, protocols, and organizational culture. Finally, latent failure involves the decisions that
affect the allocation of resources, policies, and procedures of an organization.
Safety in patients is the cornerstone of excellent health care. Most of the work that defines
patient’s practices and safety that prevent harm has concentrated on negative results of care, for instance,
morbidity and mortality ( Tjia et al.,2009). Therefore, nurses are necessary when it comes to coordination as