Risk of Errors for Patient During Hospital Stay

Running head: PATIENT SAFETY
Patient safety:
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1PATIENT SAFETY
Risk of errors for patient during hospital stay:
Druhi Neupane is a 48 year old lady who does not speak much English and her family
also have minimal knowledge of English. They have migrated to Australia from Nepal. Druhi is
at risk of communication errors and adverse events due to lack of proficiency in English
language and this can increase the likelihood of negative outcomes for patient. This is said
because language gap delays interaction with patient and lead to misinterpretation of patient’s
concern. Research study shows great association between language, serious adverse events and
length of stay is seen for patient with ethnic and language differences. A research done
regarding the evaluation of risk for adverse events among hospitalized children according to race
and language revealed that adverse event is high particularly in patients speaking other language.
In the study, the patients whose family spoke Spanish language were found to have significantly
longer hospital stays compared to those whose family spoke English (Lion et al. 2013). Hence, as
Druhi’s family also do not speak in English, Druhi is at risk of longer hospital stay.
Patients with limited English language proficiency (LEP) are more likely to be associated
with patient safety issues because language gap increases communication gaps and result in
misinterpretation of patient’s information. van Rosse et al. (2016) argues that language barrier
threatens quality of hospital care and the key situations where language barrier threatens patient
safety includes medication administration, pain management, fluid balance and patient-physician
interaction. Relatives of patient function as interpreter in case patient does not speak English.
However, this is also not possible for the care of Drugi. Hence, Druhi Neupane is at risk of
medication errors and adverse events because of communication error.

2PATIENT SAFETY
Search strategy:
Research question:
Based on the review of possible risk for Ms. Druhi during hospital stay, it has been
identified that patient safety risk and adverse events increase in such patient due to language gap
and communication errors. The research that can help to extract more details:
What factors increase risk of patient safety events in hospitalized patients with limited English
language proficiency?
Search strategy:
To find out relevant articles regarding the cause behind adverse event in patients with
English language knowledge, one data base that will help to retrieve relevant articles related to
the research question include the PubMed database. The key search terms that will help in
literature search includes ‘patient safety risk’, ‘communication error’, ‘adverse event’, ‘adverse
event in patient with LEP’ and ‘communication gap in patient with LEP’. The first strategy
would be to retrieve relevant papers using the basic search terms mentioned above. However,
advanced search will also be used by the use of Boolean operators like ‘AND’ and ‘OR’. The
search terms that has been developed using the Boolean operators are as follows:
 Adverse event AND patient with LEP
 Communication error AND patient with LEP
 Medication error AND patient with LEP