While healthcare institutions strive to create the safest and most effective environment that patients may find conducive, often, errors occur due to one reason or another. As such, root-cause analysis and safety improvement plans are essential in promoting hospital surroundings and enabling patient education. So, this root-cause analysis focuses on a sentinel event: inadequate patient education in healthcare. Adequate patient education ensures that hospitals provide the best type of medical services to patients and is the determinant of quality healthcare services. This paper, therefore, focuses on inadequate patient education, a root-cause analysis of the same, and factors that contribute to it, as well as the design of a safety improvement plan.
Analysis of the Root Cause
As the issue that forms the basis for this paper, the sentinel event at hand needs to be improved patient education, which happened in an average-sized community hospital with 40 beds designated for patients suffering from respiratory infectious disorders. The issue of inadequate patient education often arises because most patients need more adequate information about their conditions, treatment plans, and self-management (Tadesse et al., 2023). As such is the pressing case for them, the majority of them (patients) end up incurring more hospital costs that are entirely preventable. In addition, to provide an in-depth analysis of this sentinel event, this issue was entirely noted after one healthcare practitioner observed an increased number of readmissions. Though this is what this healthcare practitioner noted regarding those patients, they also learned that the increased rate of readmissions happened because patients had inadequate information or understanding of their condition. Often, such an issue affects the operations of a hospital, and this extends to influencing the nature and the quality of service they provide.
Furthermore, patientsnincurincur adverse imps, such as additional hospital costs and unnecessary tests and medical procedures. The readmission means that a patient will have to incur an extra cost by paying for extra services that will be offered. It is also critical to note that patients may also experience extra costs for other medications. As all these explain the adverse impacts or effects that this error or event might have on patients, there is a need to ensure that such errors are entirely minimized within a healthcare setting to promote the nature and quality of healthcare institutions.
So, to provide an analysis of the event as related to the findings, it is important to acknowledge that inadequate patient education is the multi-factorial issue at hand here. Furthermore, as an element that heavily contributed to the increased number of patient readmissions and an aspect of inadequate patient education, environmental factors like high workload played an essential role that contributed to the occurrence of this issue (Connor et al., 2023). High workloads, often, prevent medical health practitioners from educating patients regarding different aspects of their health. This aspect or element explains how and why such a sentinel event has occurred and will continue to occur within different healthcare institutions. In addition, the issue of inadequate patient education is also promoted by the fact that some medical institutions have outdated patient education or training. While this is the case that the majority of hospitals experience, human errors like poor communication with clients contribute to what is known as inadequate patient education.
Application of Evidence-Based Strategies
The application of evidence-based practice forms the basis on which the sentinel issue of inadequate patient education is understood. Often, the use of plain language and interactive educational tools offer healthcare practitioners a platform where they can share patient education. Educational tools like visual aids (posters and videos) will help the majority of healthcare practitioners to illustrate vital patient information. Such tools are critical in ensuring that the issue or error of inadequate patient education is entirely handled. In addition, as another practical tool that is essential in handling inadequate patient education issues, printed materials like brochures make it easier for patients to have information that they can refer to later after they have been discharged.
Furthermore, to make it a more prominent approach that ensures patients have understood patient education, strategies like the teach-back method are also vital in promoting quality healthcare services and minimizing cases of inadequate patient education. The Teach-back method allows patients to explain what they understand in terms of the medical information they have been provided with within the healthcare institution (Correia et al., 2023). This chance may help healthcare practitioners within this hospital to determine if patients have a clear understanding of the information they share. So, involving patients in educational materials to ensure they understand their medical information is essential in minimizing different errors within a hospital.
Improvement Plan with Evidence-Based and Best-Practice Strategies
The improvement plan will be realized by developing and implementing a policy for patient education standards. The patient education will involve using plain language and interactive tools to ensure that essential medication information is successfully passed on to patients, and this approach demands that patients be part of the process (Correia et al., 2023). In addition, as another critical approach that may be implemented to ensure patient education is realized, creating updated educational materials will be an appropriate way to that patient education address individual patient needs. It is an essential aspect that hospital institutions can freely employ to manage issues of inadequate patient education. Furthermore, this may provide patients with unique information, which is essential in self-management. Apart from having updated educational material, the hospital management may also provide healthcare practitioners with training on effective communication and education techniques. This method is vital in ensuring that the patient’s understanding of the information is regularly evaluated.
Existing Organizational Resources
In addition, to address the organizational resources that would improve the implementation, there is a need to include different healthcare providers who will be trained in effective communication and education techniques to minimize such errors. The selected hospital may also provide support to ensure that policies on updated educational materials and implementations are created. This approach will be critical for patients’ education and will ensure that various errors are entirely minimized within the said healthcare institution.
Conclusion
Generally, inadequate patient education is one of the issues that the majority of hospital institutions give minimal attention to, though their impacts on the quality of medical services they offer are detrimental to the extent of affecting the outcome of patients’ treatments. There is a need to implement evidence-based strategies like teach-back methods to entirely address such issues. This approach is critical in ensuring that the hospital offers quality healthcare services and minimizes instances of patients’ readmissions. As an approach that the hospital will embrace to ensure patient education is effectively realized, the management might develop and implement policies on patient education. This aspect can be realized by using plain language and interactive tools.
References
Connor, L., Dean, J., McNett, M., Tydings, D. M., Shrout, A., Gorsuch, P. F., & Gallagher‐Ford, L. (2023). Evidence‐based practice improves patient outcomes and healthcare system return on investment: Findings from a scoping review. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 20(1), 6-15.https://sigmapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/wvn.12621
Correia, J. C., Waqas, A., Assal, J. P., Davies, M. J., Somers, F., Golay, A., & Pataky, Z. (2023). Effectiveness of therapeutic patient education interventions for chronic diseases: A systematic review and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials. Frontiers in Medicine, 9, 996528. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.996528/full
Tadesse, B., Kumar, P., Girma, N., Anteneh, S., Yimam, W., & Girma, M. (2023). Preoperative patient education practices and predictors among nurses working in East Amhara Comprehensive Specialized Hospitals, Ethiopia, 2022. Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, 237-247. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2147/JMDH.S398663
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