Patient Safety an Important Issue in Health Care in the Past Ten Years

Abstract

This research paper pertains to the patient safety, which has become a major concern over past ten years. This research paper entails the detailed research regarding the reasons of the imperativeness of patient safety, and measures that can be taken for ensuring it. This paper discusses the reason for errors in health care, and initiatives that can be taken regarding patient safety. Table of Content

Abstract2

Introduction4

Discussion5

Causes of Healthcare Errors5

Human Factors5

Medical Complexity6

System Failures6

Initiatives in Patient Safety7

Technology in Healthcare7

Types of Healthcare Technology7

Quality Improvement and Safety Initiative in Paediatrics12

Effective Communication Techniques12

Conclusion13

References14

Patient Safety an Important Issue in Health Care in the Past Ten Years

Introduction

Ensuring safety of person in contact with heath care is today, one of the most vital challenged faced by health care concern. This concern is known as patient safety, which is a new discipline in healthcare that stresses on reporting, analysis and prevention of medical error, which becomes the cause of adverse healthcare events. The enormity and frequency of adverse patient events that were avoidable was unknown until the 1990s, where numerous countries reported astounding patients, who were killed or harmed due to medical errors. Patient safety was called by World health Organization an endemic concern, by identifying that every 1 person was impacted by health care errors out of 10 patients around the world. Safety of patients has developed as a distinctive discipline of healthcare, which is supported by a developing scientific framework. There exist sufficient amount of information regarding the patient safety science by trans-disciplinary body of research and theoretical literature (Patrick, Palmieri, et al., 2008). The knowledge of patient safety recurrently informs regarding improvements in areas like: adaptation of new and innovative technologies, application of lessons that are learned from industry and business, educating consumers and providers, development of incentives that are economical, and improvement and enhancement of systems of error reporting (Patrick, Palmieri, et al., 2008).

Prevalence of adverse events are not a recent phenomenon, it has been in since 4th Century B.C., the time when the Greek healers formed a Hippocratic Oath. It was in 1982, in United States, when medical world and public were shocked by the on-air program named The Deep Sleep, which presented the cases of accidents due to anaesthesia. It was presented in the program that every 6,000 American suffer or die due to over aesthetic accidents (Tomlin, 1982). In 1984, where American Society of Anaesthesiologists (ASA) formes the Anaesthesia patient Safety Foundation (APSF), Australia also formed Australian Patient Safety Foundation in 1989, for monitoring anaesthesia error. There have been numerous death occurred worldwide due to medical errors, which were not document until 1990s. In Australia after ten years of hard core efforts Australian study exposed that there occurred 18,000 annual deaths due to medical errors. However, it was also reported by president of Australian patient Safety Foundation, Professor Bill Runciman, that he himself has been the victim of a medical dosing error. It is also reported that 10,000 patents die due to ...