Patient education is one of the most critical healthcare aspects of improving patient knowledge and outcomes. To improve their health care status, patients need to learn what various types of medication are available, their side effects to stabilize, prevent, or reduce further complications. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 50% of Americans are healthcare illiterates in that they do not know health information and possible results or outcomes (Hughes & Blegen, 2008). The lack of this pertinent information interferes with the positive patient outcomes, as they do not know what possible side effects of particular medication, unfilled prescriptions and medication adherence can have on their health status. This research paper will focus on the lack of patient knowledge on medical aspects and the effects on patient outcomes, and the quality improvement problem.
Increasing patient knowledge is vital and one of the most critical factors that can aid in improving a patient’s health status. From the onset, a proper prognosis by the physician enables the patient to understand the role they need to play in recovery and improved outcomes. Lack of adequate knowledge of medication and its administration can have adverse effects on patients and outcomes. Medication errors are one of the most prevalent issues in healthcare, causing morbidity and mortality. Medication errors are “any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the healthcare professional, patient, or consumer (Hughes & Blegen, 2008). For example, according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), medication-related errors cause 7000 deaths annually, one out of 131 outpatient deaths and one in every 854 inpatient deaths (Hughes & Blegen, 2008). Therefore, it is crucial to reduce these medication errors to reduce the progression of illness and improve patient outcomes.
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Quality healthcare increases the degree that health services for people and the population’s health desired outcomes concerning the consistent and current professional knowledge (Lohr & Schroeder, 1990). On this aspect, therefore, increasing patient education ought to focus on the practical, equitable, safe, timely, efficient, and patient-centered information to improve the level of patient outcomes. This motive would reduce the number of extended stays in hospitals, recurrence of illnesses and patient safety and experiences. Hence, improving the hospital and the entire healthcare processes and systems is vital in reaching this desirable goal.
Increasing the level of medication safety knowledge is also another dilemma that the necessary information about the side effects of drugs and their causal factors, patients often face traumatic issues and poor outcomes. Additionally, weak medication administration leads typically to adverse drug effects and reactions (Leape, 1995). These reactions and adverse effects may affect the patient physically and psychologically due to lack of proper diagnosis in patient conditions or the lack of sufficient information regarding the patient’s age, or the number of current medication (Aspinall, Whittle, Aspinall, et al., 2002). Therefore, patient education is vital in increasing their knowledge on the effectiveness of drugs and ultimately reducing complications related to ailments and diseases while ensuring the continuity of care.
Improving the patients’ knowledge has multi-faceted benefits for all participants in the healthcare sector like patients, hospitals, physicians, nurses, and clinicians. Therefore, straightforward methods of providing information are critical to making more impact. This value is because it improves and encourages adherence. Strict observance of a particular medication, the dosage, before and after recovery and wellbeing, regimen ought to achieve the specific patient outcome that reduces daily functioning. According to Gold and McClung patient education advances compliance in a wide range of disease severity while the lack of permission decreases health benefits, affects people quality of life, increases the number of hospitalizations and overall higher health costs are imminent (2006).
Another aspect of lack of patient knowledge worth improving the overall patient outcomes is the side effects of medications. Reports by various healthcare institutions recognize the value and importance of educating patients about the side effects of drugs. This vital information improves patient satisfaction, lack of adherence to health-improving medications after patient discharge from the hospital and increased costly readmissions (Borgsteede, Karapinar-Carkit, Hoffmann, Zoer, & van den Bemt, 2011). Additionally, according to Boulding, Glickman, Manary, Schulman, and Staelin, there is a correlation between patient satisfaction and lower preventable numbers of readmissions, which account for about $17 billion annually (2011). It is therefore crucial that patient education becomes a priority for institutions and healthcare providers especially those prescribing these drugs to inform the patients on the effects of maintaining particular regimens.
There are several methods that healthcare professional can use to educate their patients about medication to improve the resultant outcome and reduce medical errors, side effects and promote adherence to particular medication regimens. By introducing a system that allows patients to gain knowledge about these issues would lead to better quality of life, patient satisfaction, and better health quality or wellbeing. In this aspect, changes are essential in providing more medications information and teaching to patients. Hence, implementing a quality improvement process for these issues is pertinent to the healthcare industry and is unavoidable.
There is a dilemma in medical professionals in regards to who should offer this information to the patients whether the nurses or pharmacists. However, according to Mustch and Herbert (2010), nurses spend most of their work time with patients and they ought to use this time to educate patients about their health, medication and expected outcomes. For example, through verbal and written teaching modes used by the nurses, Mustch and Herbert found that they increased the patients' knowledge about cardiovascular medications. Additionally, post-intervention methods resulted in an increase of positive patient outcome from 30% to 58% (2010). Therefore, it is essential that hospitals use different methods of teaching patients about their conditions by implementing an efficient system that saves time for both patients and the medical fraternity.
Another essential aspect of the medication process whose aim is to improve patient safety and wellbeing is the monitoring and assessment perspective. This intervention, primarily by nurses, provides benefits during the drug administration process. According to a study by Manias, Aitken, and Dunning, monitoring patients before, during and after treatment and medication, medical errors and concerns were few. This reduction was due to nurses taking time to assess the patients other tests and results, asking the patients about their overall health and complications, checking their vital signs, and offering timed medication processes (2004). Therefore, the direct observation approaches are essential for detecting medication errors and adverse drug events.
Human errors are another perspective that needs recognition and monitoring to improve medical knowledge and patient outcome. To err is human but by recognizing, monitoring and taking precautionary measures would improve the quality process. Distractions, interruptions, fatigue, heavy workloads, lack of adequate skills and experience are some of the common concerns related to the medications knowledge, administration, and poor quality of health services. According to a study assessing the link between fatigue and sleep loss with medical administration errors using a national sample of nurses for two weeks, the rate of mistakes increased after they worked for 12.5 hours (Hughes & Blegen, 2008). Therefore, by including the patients in this process, for example through the self-administration program, it is evident that it would result in fewer errors. Achieving this would necessitate teaching and improving the medication knowledge of patients and reducing mistakes since the patients are under the supervision of the nurses.
According to Hughes and Blegen, quality improvement is “a systematic, data-guided activity designed to bring about an immediate improvement in health care delivery in particular settings.” Whereas the quality enhancement plan is “any intervention aimed at reducing the quality gap for a group of patients representative of those encountered in routine practice (Hughes & Blegen, 2008)”
Patient-centered healthcare is critical to improving outcomes and patient satisfaction. For this reason, increasing patient knowledge plays an important role. By introducing the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) plan, healthcare professionals would have first-hand experience and skills to alleviate the problem of medication errors by improving patient knowledge. The PDSA is an essential component of healthcare improvement that aims at accelerating quality improvement. Since the aim is to increase patient awareness of medication aspects to improve their outcomes, the next step is to implement a change in the process of offering this information. This aspect is vital since changes often lead to improvement primarily in the healthcare industry. Therefore, the PDSA would lead to the medical fraternity in figuring out the specific areas of change, how to collect the data, analyze and synthesize this information and determine its efficiencies.
Since the PDSA is cyclical, it enables the nurses and other medical professionals to introduce changes in educating and improving medication knowledge in patients at small intervals rather than making significant sudden changes. This advantage of this process is useful in analyzing what reforms are working, which are not working, thereby increasing the efficient patient outcome. The essence of improving patient knowledge and the patient result is to reduce errors, side effects, reduced drug administration, and readmissions due to lack of patient adherence and improve the quality of care and patient satisfaction. Hence, the PDSA would play a vital role in this quality improvement process since the objectives are predetermined and achievable.
Additionally, since the PDSA plan works well in improving quality through the determination of functional relationships in changes and their outcomes, three questions guide the implementation of reform. These questions are determining the goal of the project, how to know whether the goal is accomplished and what is necessary to achieve it (Hughes, 2008). Therefore, increasing patient knowledge on medication and outcomes is integral and embedded in the PDSA cycle. Using direct observation, communicating to patients either orally or written materials, teaching patients about the medication process, errors, lack of adherence are all vital in improving patient outcomes. It also adds to the body of work on quality improvement projects that different research departments in healthcare institutions can use in determining the effectiveness of improving healthcare change.
In conclusion, it is essential to increase patient knowledge to improve outcomes for patients. By determining the information gaps and the requirements necessary for improving patient outcomes regarding health status and well-being, patient safety and satisfaction, and reduced readmissions due to lack of persistence and adherence to specific medication regimens. Therefore the quality improvement process ought to have simple and easy measures that allow practitioners especially nurses to use their time to educate patients on various medication aspects while monitoring and analyzing the most efficient changes that have a more significant impact. This model would aid institutions in managing concerns related to patient illiteracy.
References
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