We are all familiar with the term “medical errors.” They can happen at any point, anytime, and are all too common in hospitals. The quality tool I selected this week, 10 Patient Safety Tips for Hospitals, addresses key areas that hospitals can tackle to help prevent or reduce medical errors.
The tool discusses some common tips that we all might think of, for example, access & improve patient safety cultures, build teamwork, limit shifts for hospital staff, and use reliable decision-support tools at the point-of-care. We should be familiar with those tips; however, one of the tips I found to be interesting was to prevent central line-related bloodstream infections by following 5 procedures including washing your hands, using full-barrier precautions, cleaning the skin, avoiding the femoral site, & removing unnecessary catheters. The hospitals that followed these tip and these procedures reduced deadly infections to zero, in a study of 100 hospitals. For me, this was a shock that following what seemed to be basic steps could save that many lives. It is scary to think that hospitals are causing patient deaths because they do not want to “wash their hands” before placing a central line.
Some other suggestions were to make good use of senior ICU nurses. This is a great idea because they have the most experience and they should be able to take the lead on providing proper care. Other tips were to set up a safety reporting system and to minimize unnecessary interruptions. It is important that medical workers keep their concentration when preparing medications or doing other procedures. The smallest distraction could mean the life or death of a patient.
Most of the tips in this tool we probably already know, but a lot of people tend to take caution for granted. Experienced health care providers probably think that they do not need these tips because they have been doing it for years, but I believe you can never be too careful when dealing with people lives.
1 comment:
Fantastic job at being specific about how to prevent central line-related bloodstream infections!!!!!!!!
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