Types of Errors and Ways to Improve Patient Safety
Errors frequently occur, lowering the patient’s quality of care due to the continually changing healthcare setting. It is vital to recognize various types of errors within healthcare organizations: medication errors, misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, faulty medical devices, infection, improper medical device placement, and lack of accountability for surgical equipment. Studying these errors, and discovering how to stop, monitor, and take action against them is the solution to changing the organization’s care standards. During a surgical procedure, practitioners usually use different tools on the human body. An instance of failure to account for surgical equipment that brings about errors is when devices and bandaging fails to be accounted for before any surgery is complete. The error is preventable by ensuring that lamps and absorbents have not been missed to avoid undertaking another painful operation to correct the problem.
The second form of error includes faulty medical devices which involve having technical problems with the machine. This defective medical device error has prevented medical staff from providing patients with the appropriate care. Manufacturers who offer medical supplies are trusted to ensure the equipment functions well and will not harm you. The provider should reveal the risks concerned with the equipment since they might as well be potentially responsible. If they fail to offer patients the information they require for well-versed consent, it might be a medical error.
Medical providers should function under practices that limit the possibility of infections error. For instance, having faulty equipment might turn to other means to handle the lack of perfect equipment, putting the patients at risk of practices failing and possible infection. The error can be prevented by ensuring that lamps and absorbents have not been missed, which might bring about an increased risk of infection. The other error involves situations where the medical staff places the medical device inappropriately. An example is when medical staff improperly positions stints which eventually interrupt the blood supply within the body. Medical devices do not just require being secure and efficient; they also need to be precisely located to prevent such errors.
The other form of error is medication error which takes place when the patient receives the wrong medication. For instance, some medication charts in patients’ rooms inform medical personnel handling the patients what medications the patients have previously had and the drugs they require. If the medicines are not correctly charted, it might bring about errors where a patient is being given an overdose. The staff should continually communicate with each other to evade the error. Lastly, misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis are also medical errors that occur in health facilities. For instance, inadequate supplies to care for patients might bring about medical errors where a patient is misdiagnosed, bringing about various problems. A refusal to consider that there are some underlying medical conditions might be as risky as a misdiagnosis. Therefore, it is essential to plan correctly to ensure that the health facility includes policies prepared to guarantee the patients are in safe hands.
SEIPS Tool Framework, Uses, and Its Comparison with the Swiss cheese Model
Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) tool is a valuable tool that various healthcare organizations utilize to spot flaws in the system and make efficient solutions to decrease or avoid errors. The structure of SEIPS facilitates medical staff to recognize the features and models of activities and methods that bring about errors in the healthcare environment (Abraham, et al., 2021). The SEIPS tool facilitates a practical approach to preparedness, integrating other elements of tasks, devices, and technology. The model can also offer the chance and means to look at any pandemic, even using real‐time experience from the forefront.
An additional viable error-reduction approach in healthcare is the “Swiss Cheese Model.” In the model, the organization’s preventing errors is made as a series of barriers to cheese pieces and weaknesses in parts of the system revealed by the holes in the cheese. On the contrary, the Swiss Cheese Model is employed once there are some underlying malfunctions in a healthcare facility (Tevaarwerk et al. 2020). The Swiss cheese model is utilized in healthcare organizations during risk mitigation by preparing a sequence of barriers to prevent dangers to humans.
Positive Effects of SEIPS Tool in Reducing Errors in a High-Risk Health Care Facility
There are various positive effects connected to the SEIPS tool. This tool helps health facilities decrease the sum of errors by ensuring patient quality is the primary concern. The SEIPS tool has a theoretical plan that helps create and evaluate primary care teams that change organizations from medical practice to high-functioning team care, which is being offered to patients (Danesh et al. 2020). The advantage of using the SEIPS model is that the patient’s safety is increased, facilitating health organizations to provide the best quality care to the patient.
Relationship between CQI and SEIPS to Produce Quality Outcome
Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and SEIPS Model help healthcare organizations make the best quality results for patients. With a Patient-centric focus, the healthcare institutions can promote the common good on public grounds by listening to and respecting the general public’s concerns. Improving the quality of care is founded on patients’ needs since they are the primary concern in healthcare organizations. Lack of trust in patients’ safety an organization will not get the income they require to keep the hospital functioning as it should be. When patients observe hospitals using the SEIPS tool to deal with errors within the systems and the Continuous Quality Improvement model to advance the quality of care offered, they trust the facility.
References
Abraham, J., Galanter, W. L., Touchette, D., Xia, Y., Holzer, K. J., Leung, V., &Kannampallil, T. (2021). Risk factors associated with medication ordering errors. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 28(1), 86-94.
Danesh, M. K., Garosi, E., Mazloumi, A., &Najafi, S. (2020). Identifying factors influencing cardiac care nurses’ workability within the framework of system engineering initiative for patient safety. Work, 66(3), 569-577.
Tevaarwerk, A. J., Klemp, J. R., van Londen, G. J., Hesse, B. W., & Sesto, M. E. (2018). Moving beyond static survivorship care plans: A systems engineering approach to population health management for cancer survivors. Cancer, 124(22), 4292-4300.