Adaptation of Best Practices in Patient Safety to Fit Local Contexts

This report focuses on the crucial adaptation of patient safety best practices to fit local contexts in healthcare settings. It emphasizes that while high-quality guidelines are essential, customizing them for specific environments is key to improving patient safety practices and reducing effort duplication. The report highlights the importance of a participatory and inclusive approach to ensure the integrity of evidence-based practices and address specific health needs, priorities, and resources available locally. It also discusses the significance of considering the complexity of changes, implementation strategies, and the context of care practices. The report uses the example of hospital rapid response teams (RRTs) to illustrate how local projects can adapt to improvement changes, showcasing the importance of effective teams, understanding signs of deterioration, and training healthcare staff. The core elements of the RRT improvement guide, such as the statements of signs and deterioration, can be adapted to fit local contexts, taking into consideration the staffing, culture, and hospital setup. The report concludes by stressing the need for methods of training and staff approaches to suit local context to enhance patient safety.

Task
Adaptation of best practices in patient safety to fit local contexts
University
Name
Tutor
Date

Adaptation of best practices in patient safety to fit local contexts
Adaption of knowledge to the local context is fundamental in health care practices.
Usage of best evidence in clinical practices is key in enhancing quality health care aspects.
Guidelines and other best practices have adopted and applied in health care practices to
enhance service delivery. High-quality guidelines have often been seen as necessary tools,
they are sufficient tools to incorporate patient safety to fit local contexts. The guideline
provides a plethora of actions, there is a need to enhance the adaption of these guidelines to
fit the local contextual situations. Customization of the aspects of the clinical practice into the
local contextual environment is essential for improving patient safety practices (Ogrinc et al.,
2015).
In nursing practice, adapting high-quality guidelines for local contextual usage is key in
reducing effort duplication and enhancing overall applicability. In some of the cases,
customizing guideline to be used in local contexts have often eroded the quality of care,
however, there is a need for a more participatory approach which ensures quality adherences.
Existing guidelines can be customized and applied to fit local situation through active
systematic and an inclusive approach. This cycle enhances the integrity of the evidence-based
practices being used. Local adaptation of guidelines offers an avenue for specific health
needs, priorities and resources available (Hoffmann et al., 2014).
Scientific evidence implementation has focused on the extent at which treatments and
service delivery models are implemented in the local context and taken up by clinicians.
Research has demonstrated that treatments and delivery models are often undertaken by
clinicians and other health care staffs. Often the fidelity of original improvement is
challenging to establish and to sustain effectively. Three fundamental issues have been of
focus; the complexity of a new better way. Simple changes are simpler and effective to
initiate such as those requiring more than one change of professional services. Another key
aspect is the structure and the strategy to implement. Actions program are often used to
appropriate facilitation and training in other resources to facilitation work organization.
Lastly is the context of care practices which needs to change. In this case, if the health care
leaders do not see an improvement to be a priority then the take is likely to be low (Maharaj ,
Raffaele & Wendon, 2015).

A key example of how best practices are fitted on the local context involve hospital
rapid response teams-RRTs or medical emergency teams. This proves how and the effect of
how local projects adapt to improvement changes. Research undertaken in the 1980s began to
assess and report an intervention on an already tested tool which offered staff an opportunity
in the hospital units to seek expert views and guidance on improving patient care especially
those with the deteriorating state of care. Normal practice staff would have to make contact
with nurse or doctors for guidance, however, there arise times when the staff were not
available and this led to the adoption of calls service using the rapid response team for expert
guidance. This approach influence the way care delivery was offered. Successful
implementation necessitated for an effective team, understanding signs of deterioration, time
to call RRT and training of health care staff. The composition of the staff was largely based
on existing resources and local contexts (Ovretveit et al., 2018).
The key aspect which remains relatively constant on this approach was the statements
of signs and deterioration which the staff can be able to call the RRT. The key features of the
RRT improvement guide can be largely be adapted to fit local context and the general
staffing, culture and other hospital set up environment. In this strategy often, statements of
signs and deterioration are similar across human settings, while the methods of training and
staff approaches need to suit local context to enhance patient safety.

References
Hoffmann, T. C., Glasziou, P. P., Boutron, I., Milne, R., Perera, R., Moher, D., ... & Lamb, S.
E. (2014). Better reporting of interventions: template for intervention description and
replication (TIDieR) checklist and guide. Bmj, 348, g1687.
Maharaj, R., Raffaele, I., & Wendon, J. (2015). Rapid response systems: a systematic review
and meta-analysis. Critical Care, 19(1), 254.
Ogrinc, G., Davies, L., Goodman, D., Batalden, P., Davidoff, F., & Stevens, D. (2015).
SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence): revised
publication guidelines from a detailed consensus process. The Journal of Continuing
Education in Nursing, 46(11), 501-507.
Ovretveit, J., Dolan-Branton, L., Marx, M., Reid, A., Reed, J., & Agins, B. (2018). Adapting
improvements to context: when, why and how?. International Journal for Quality in
Health Care, 30(suppl_1), 20-23.