Community Discussion | Quality Improvement- The Hospital Patient Safety Initiative

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Quality Improvement- The Hospital Patient Safety Initiative

Posted by: RimaAnn Nelson on June 8, 2008 at 7:48PM EST

One of the most important movements we have seen in health care in the past seven years is the patient safety movement. Each year this initiative continues to expand, focusing on tools such as the root cause analysis process to identify system breakdowns that have led to medical errors. Keeping the focus on the system and not the person has allowed organizations to move towards a culture of safety. An increase in medical error reporting is a result of this culture and one that allows an organization to truely embrace the concepts of quality improvement versus quality assurance.

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(3) Comments

Posted by: Dwight Linton on June 8, 2008 11:03PM EST

I agree. It is also enabled healthcare staff to truly take a tactical look at why the error occurred and apply lessons learned immediately. In addition, the patient safety movement, also gives staff encouragement to discuss these concerns to ensure the error does not happen again. The lessons learned quickly become best practices that can be implement throughout the organization appropriately.

Posted by: Elizabeth Watanabe on June 20, 2008 8:51PM EST

I also agree that the patient safety movement is critical to the overall improvement in medical care. I also like the fact that this movement is supposed to not be punitive-employees who make mistakes are not punished for their actions. This is an important component of any quality improvement process. Also, I believe it reduces any sense of shame or embarassment felt by employees, as the focus is on improving the process, with little or no blame placed on the employee.

Posted by: Traci Hindman on July 8, 2008 11:52PM EST

I believe the Joint Commission has played an integral role in forcing facilities to take a more proactive role in patient safety. Specific examples are:
• Establishing requirements for sentinel event reporting (event and response(s) taken by the organization) • Creation, implementation and refinement of National Patient Safety Goals from 2003 to present • Revision of hospital inspection standards in 2004 to focus on medication management as a system rather than separate pieces each controlled by different groups (pharmacy, nursing, providers)