Quality and Safety in Healthcare | Assignment

Running head: QUALITY AND SAFETY IN HEALTHCARE
QUALITY AND SAFETY IN HEALTHCARE
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QUALITY AND SAFETY IN HEALTHCARE1
Q.2. Patient Safety and Risk
“Patient safety” can be described as an important consideration in the field of
healthcare to prevent the possible adverse outcomes in the patient (World Health
Organization, 2017). There is a wide range of area to consider for ensuring patient
safety. The aspects such as the correct assessment of the patient’s condition,
development of a proper care plan addressing all the requirements of the patients and
proper administration of medication and the other treatment therapies in the patient.
Patient safety is also one of the principal components of quality care in a healthcare
setting. It is also an important factor for patient satisfaction (World Health Organization,
2017).
Safety in healthcare is a culture that is maintained by the healthcare workers and
the healthcare organisation itself. The culture ensures the patient safety by adopting
various measures, such as minimisation of the errors, effective communication between
the healthcare professionals themselves along with the patients (Lamé & Dixon-Woods,
2020). The safety culture in the field of healthcare is based on three ethical principles of
healthcare mainly. The principle of justice expects the healthcare workers to maintain
all the rights of the patient, including the right to life, health and appropriate treatment.
The principle of beneficence expects the healthcare professionals to do good to the
patients only and finally, the principle of non-maleficence expects them not to harm the
patients intentionally or unintentionally (Kadivar et al., 2017). Thus for the maintenance
of all these principles require proper maintenance of a safety culture in the field of
healthcare that is aimed at ensuring patient safety.
Hence it can be decided that safety in healthcare is a culture that is followed by
the healthcare workers and the healthcare organisation (Lamé & Dixon-Woods, 2020).

QUALITY AND SAFETY IN HEALTHCARE2
Patient safety, on the other hand, is an important aspect of quality care, which can be
achieved by proper maintenance of the safety culture in healthcare (World Health
Organization, 2017).
Risk management can be defined as a series of activities and efforts for ensuring
quality care in a healthcare setting. This is mainly a combined effort of all the healthcare
staffs, which is aimed at ensuring the safety of the patient (Iuga & McGuire, 2014).
The approaches for successful risk management involves always maintaining a
proper safety culture in a healthcare setting, predicting the potential risks to the patient’s
health prior to its actual occurrence and appropriate and timely management of a sudden
risky event concerning the patient’s health (Alam, 2016). The effective communication
between the healthcare professionals themselves and with the patients along with their
families can be considered as the primary tool for successful risk management in the
field of healthcare (Lundgren & McMakin, 2018). The other tools include a successful
incident reporting, clinical audit indicators, patient tracers, medical history and records
of a patient and also survey for determining the patient satisfaction (Alam, 2016).
Q.3 Safety culture and measurement
Safety culture in the field of healthcare can be described as a culture that should
be maintained by all the healthcare organisations to ensure the safety of the patients and
their families along with all the healthcare staffs who are working as a part of that
organisation (Safetyandquality.gov.au, 2020). The level of maintenance of the safety
culture by an organisation is an indicator of its reliability compared to the other
organisations. Successful maintenance of this culture is directly associated with client
satisfaction along with employee satisfaction (Biddison et al., 2016). It is very important
for an organisational leader to make continuous assessments on the successful