Background of the study
Healthcare safety is a cornerstone to avoiding unexpected harm when providing healthcare services. The concept of healthcare safety aims to prevent and reduce errors and risks to patients in the event of providing healthcare services to the patients. Therefore healthcare providers are encouraged to improve safety and quality healthcare so that patients are protected from any harm when receiving healthcare. Healthcare safety is fundamental to ensure patients receive quality health services, and there should be safe and patient-centers to ensure safety improvement. Since healthcare safety is vital; clear policies, better leadership, skilled healthcare providers, and involvement of patients should be successfully implemented in healthcare centers to ensure patients are protected from unintended harm.
Although healthcare safety is vital in protecting patients from risks and errors, patient harm still occurs in healthcare centers. Complexity in health care settings has usually resulted in increased human prone to more mistakes. For instance, the wrong medication for a patient in a hospital may result from similar packaging. In this case, the prescription passes through different levels, from the doctor to the nurse administering the medication to the patient. This error is likely to occur when there is no proper safeguarding process at each level that could help identify and correct the mistake; thus, it harms the patient. In this case, the underlying factors that could have led to the error in medication can be poor communication between healthcare providers, failure to verify the medical before administration, and lack of patient involvement in the care—expecting flawless performance from healthcare providers when there are more complexities in the health care system, and high stress is unrealistic. Therefore individual perfection cannot be relied upon to improve the safety of healthcare. According to Lui (2021), humans are more prevented from making mistakes when placed in a working environment with well-designed tasks, systems, and processes. Therefore, with the increased health care, system healthcare safety can be maintained by ensuring operation, systems are well designed, and safety beliefs are shared among healthcare providers.
Millions of patients die or suffer from risks and errors associated with unsafe health care, posing a significant challenge to patient safety. Mistakeshealthcarecare has brought various concerns a healthcare safety, and most patient harms reported in healthcare centers result from medication errors,healthcare-associated procedures, and unsafe surgical care procedures. Lui et al. (20200) argue that in most cases of patient harm reported every year, medication errors in healthcare are associated with infections, the most significant cause of burden of damage to the patient through exposure to risk and harm. Other errors that have been found to contribute to increased patient harm include unsafe surgical care procedures and unsafe injection practices. For instance, dangerous surgical care procedures have contributed to about 25% of complications in patients since nearly 7 million patients worldwide suffer from surgical care complications. Furthermore, unsafe transfusion practices have been found to cause harm to patients through the exposure of patients to risk transfusion reactions, contributing to increased transmission of infections such as HIV/AIDS.
Following the various patient harms reported every year, World Health Organization (WHO) has responded by implementing a resolution of patient safety to resolve the concerns and maintain safety in healthcare centers. According to WHO, patient safety is vital; therefore, it has been globally prioritized as a resolution to patient safety. To achieve this, the WHO has endorsed September 17 as World Patient Safety Day, which aims to promote patient safety by increasing awareness and understanding of patient safety. Through the establishment of World Patient Safety Day, WHO has been capable of developing patient safety guidelines and monitoring its improvements. Patient safety being a concern today, it has been found that taking key actions such as setting global priorities and monitoring patient care healthcare settings will help ain’t healthcare safety. Additionally, Kiluvi et al. (2222) argue that safety can be maintained in healthcare by engaging patients in healthcare and providing technical support in designing healthcare systems.
Problem Statement
Complex healthcare systems have paved the way for increased patient harm in healthcare settings. These complexities have therefore been found to have created risks that have caused patients harm and burdened them despite a well-developed health system. According to Lui (2021), hospital patient harm has resulted from poor communication between the care provider, unskilled healthcare professionals, and a lack of safeguarding process in healthcare. For instance, medication errors leading to increased patient harm, ineffective communication, and lack of verification of medication before administering to the patient are widespread among healthcare providers, hence becoming a problem. As a result, patients have been exposed to risks that have caused harm and death to many patients every year. Lack of patient involvement in their care, lack of verification of medication before administering, and lack of communication between healthcare providers have continued to diminish the safety of healthcare settings. These challenges pose a need to improve and maintain safe healthcare by finding the areas with faults and taking critical actions to prevent the problem.
Purpose of the Study
The study intends to reveal the various ways and actions that can be implemented to maintain safety healthcare setting. The study will also shed light on the common underlying factors that have contributed to increased patient harm in healthcare centers and reveal the common harms and risks that patients face due to patient safety failure. Moreover, the study proposes to shed light on the extent to which reduced patient safety has caused burdens to victims and their families. Lastly, the study will examine the area of patient safety awareness, and the attitudes healthcare providers have toward patient involvement in their health to maintain safe healthcare.
Significance of the Study
The results from the study will reveal how the safety healthcare sector can be maintained by adopting appropriate strategies and actions. The findings will be significant in showing the common causes of decreased patient safety in healthcare settings and serve as an essential tool for solving the issue and maintaining safety in healthcare care. Furthermore, the findings from the study will help reveal the factors that have contributed significantly to the lack of patient safety healthcare systems and be used to develop critical actions to maintain safety in health centers. Well-designed processes, tasks, procedures, and involvement of patients in their health will add to the discussion on how security can be maintained in the healthcare sector and become tools in implementing strategies for resolution in patient safety. At large, the study will provide insights into fundamental ways of maintaining safe healthcare to reduce the burden of harm to patients due to a lack of patient safety.
Assumptions
The study’s assumptions will be based on the interviewing and administering of the questionnaire in collecting data. The analysis assumes that the participants in the survey will answer an interview question honestly and factually. Therefore, it assumes the responses are natural. Also, the study assumes that health professionals are aware of patient safety and thus will respond to the questionnaires tangibly. Moreover, the analysis assumes that healthcare providers such as doctors, pharmacists, and nurses have deep knowledge of healthcare protection than laypeople. Lastly, the study believes that patients are not fully involved in healthcare.
Limitations of the study
Basing the study’s assumption, the investigation suffers from the various limitations that will be considered in validating the answers from each response. The study is limited to healthcare providers and members of the public from English-speaking countries and thus will only use English to collect data. Also, the study is limited to only registered healthcare providers, and therefore the participant in the study should have a license. Lastly, the study is limited to the researcher’s experience level and, therefore, may not cover all aspects of maintaining safety healthcare setting.
References
Lui, R. N. (2021). Safety in endoscopy for patients healthcare care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Techniques and Innovations in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, 23(2), 170-178. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590030720301409
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