Patient Safety
Measuring and Assessing Patient Safety
Neribel Claudio
HCA 375
John Gomillion
July 25, 2010
Measuring and Assessing Patient Safety
Patient safety is such an essential part of our health care system and it helps describe quality health care. Keeping the patients safe is a challenging issue because errors and mistakes can and do happen every day. Error occurs “when a process does not proceed the way that it was intended by its designers and managers” (McLaughlin & Kaluzny 2006). According to the Institute of Medicine, medical error resulted in as many as 98,000 preventable deaths per year. Someone has to ensure methods are taken to help reduce the possibility that errors occur, but who is responsible for taking these proper measurers? Is it society, patients themselves, physicians, nurses, nursing professors, administrators, researchers, physicians, or professional associations? Consequence, all of these entities are responsible for making sure the patient has the safest environment possible. This is a nationwide and worldwide problem that will never be completely resolved because there is always a chance that medical errors happen. Patient safety is a sensitive concept to both understand and measure. What does it mean to be safe? a system where no errors occur, or a system in which patient harm as a consequence of error is minimized? Measurement of patient safety is difficult, due to our inability to define patient harm, and an inappropriate focus on individual error. Particular issues involves distinguishing safety from quality, the negative connotations of error, the poor relation of error with patient harm, and the emotion that surrounds preventable patient harm. Patient safety measurement has been the misuse of reported clinical incident data as a measure of patient safety performance. According to France, Greevy, Liu, Burgess, Dittus, Weinger, & Speroff in their article Measuring and Comparing Safety Climate in
Neribel Claudio
HCA 375
John Gomillion
July 25, 2010
Measuring and Assessing Patient Safety
Patient safety is such an essential part of our health care system and it helps describe quality health care. Keeping the patients safe is a challenging issue because errors and mistakes can and do happen every day. Error occurs “when a process does not proceed the way that it was intended by its designers and managers” (McLaughlin & Kaluzny 2006). According to the Institute of Medicine, medical error resulted in as many as 98,000 preventable deaths per year. Someone has to ensure methods are taken to help reduce the possibility that errors occur, but who is responsible for taking these proper measurers? Is it society, patients themselves, physicians, nurses, nursing professors, administrators, researchers, physicians, or professional associations? Consequence, all of these entities are responsible for making sure the patient has the safest environment possible. This is a nationwide and worldwide problem that will never be completely resolved because there is always a chance that medical errors happen. Patient safety is a sensitive concept to both understand and measure. What does it mean to be safe? a system where no errors occur, or a system in which patient harm as a consequence of error is minimized? Measurement of patient safety is difficult, due to our inability to define patient harm, and an inappropriate focus on individual error. Particular issues involves distinguishing safety from quality, the negative connotations of error, the poor relation of error with patient harm, and the emotion that surrounds preventable patient harm. Patient safety measurement has been the misuse of reported clinical incident data as a measure of patient safety performance. According to France, Greevy, Liu, Burgess, Dittus, Weinger, & Speroff in their article Measuring and Comparing Safety Climate in
References: France, D., Greevy, R., Liu, X., Burgess, H., Dittus, R., Weinger, M., & Speroff, T.. (2010). Measuring and Comparing Safety Climate in Intensive Care Units. Medical Care, 48(3), 279. Retrieved July 23, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 1973773451). Punekar, Yogesh Suresh (2006). Development and validation of a patient medication risk reduction behavior scale and application in a managed care population. Ph.D. dissertation, Purdue University, United States -- Indiana. Retrieved July 23, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global.(Publication No. AAT 3124208). Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Patient Safety Indicators Overview. AHRQ Quality Indicators. February 2006. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. Retrieved July 24, 2010 from http://www.qualityindicators.ahrq.gov/psi_overview.htm Bielanski, G.. (2010, August). Patient safety Q&A. Briefings on Patient Safety, 11(8), 12,11. Retrieved July 23, 2010, from ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source. (Document ID: 2080130911). McLaughlin, C., Kaluzny A. (2006). Continuous Quality Improvement in Health Care, Third Edition. Jones and Bartlett Publishers: Boston.