Patient safety has so far been a crucial issue in ensuring the outcomes of medical services is helpful to the clients. It is a critical issue to see patients who seek treatment or health care being affected by factors within the settings they are admitted. That is why the Joint Commission formulated the National Patient Safety Goals to assess and evaluate the safety and the quality of services the healthcare facilities provide to the patients. These goals were also developed to help the organization mandated to patient well-being address specific areas that might affect the clients. One of the areas of interest which this paper will look at is the home care, and there are goals in this section that help the healthcare provider deal with the problems that the patients face in this category.
Thesis: Providers face the challenges of errors either on the wrong identity or medication discrepancies in every aspect of treatment.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Goal 1
Improve the accuracy of patient identification
Throughout the medical field, the failure to identify the patients correctly amount to medication errors, testing errors, and wrong procedures to the wrong person. These mistakes can at times lead to severe effects, for instance, a couple ending up with a child who is not theirs. In the United States, the misidentification of patients was demonstrated when it was reported in more than a hundred single root cause analyses in veterans. The incident is not only in the US but also in other countries which are developed. In the United Kingdom, the National Patient Safety Agency reported that 236 events and near misses related to errors in identifications that saw some wristbands missing and some had the incorrect information.
The areas that are profoundly affected by the misidentification of patients include blood transfusion phlebotomy, drug administration, and surgical intervention. The major problem that leads to inadequate patient identification is the likelihood of members in the home care facilities to hand over work as their shifts end. Limiting the working time of these professionals lead to higher rates of hand-over and other communication problems (Kim et al., 2013). For instance, if a nurse is tired after a tedious shift, he or she is likely to give incomplete information about the patients and what is to be done to them to the person taking over.
As this problem of patient misidentification has been linked to the cause of many errors, the Joint Commission laid out improving patient identification as the first goal for the National Patient Safety Goals. The approach is based on the specifics of using at least two identifiers when providing care, treatment, or services. These identifiers can be individual’s name, telephone number, identification number, or other identifiers specific to that individual. The goal is helpful as it would prevent the gross errors that occur not only in-home care but also the different settings providing healthcare services. There are some of the impediments that can hinder the successful implementation of the recommendations. One of these is that the technology used may be expensive and thus making the costs associated with the adoption of such technologies skyrocket. There is also the bit of lack of behavior change among the practitioners to comply with the recommendations. In some instances, workers in the home care facilities can resort to using workarounds and shortcuts to achieve the intended result faster (Kim et al., 2013).
The repeated identifications on the patient can make the relationship between the client and the service provider be compromised. By adopting computerized or automatic technologies that improve the process of identification, the patients will be relieved of the mistakes and also the overall performance of the facility will be higher. Such techniques include barcoding which has been proved to be cost-effective. The other intervention is collaborated with the patients by educating them and their relatives on the importance of proper identification and the dangers of misidentification.
In my setting of work, we use the double-identification of both the name and the identification number.
Goal 2
Improve the safety of using medications
This goal focuses on the issues that arise from the use of multiple medications to patients within the home care. In a setting that a large number of patients use many forms of medicine, the management of those doses becomes complex thus making drug reconciliation a crucial issue (Mueller et al., 2012) . In the process, the practitioner compares the drugs the patient should take to the new form that is ordered for the patient, and if there are any discrepancies, they are solved there. The rationale of this goal is based on the fact that differences in medication affect the outcome of practice on the patient. It hinders the best results for the client as some reactions can take place which may lead to further complications. The process of medication reconciliation should be geared towards the solution of such discrepancies. When the nurse or caregiver compares the medication, they look at omissions, duplications, and interactions ( Mueller et al., 2012) . They also establish whether there is need to continue the current medicine, or the new ones can take effect. The information that clinicians use to carry out reconciliation includes dose, frequency, drug name, route of administration, and purpose. The work of the organization should be to carry out the process between the current and newly ordered medicines and to prescribe them safely in the future.
The goal recommends that the organization should obtain or update the medication organization that the client is currently taking. The data should be documented in a list or in any format that fits the management of medicines. The information should be obtained during the first contact, and the update takes place when the medication changes. The second step of reconciliation is through noting down all the types of information that the drug assumes. For instance, the name, purpose, frequency, route, and dose should be recorded in different circumstances. The current medication should then be reconciled with the ordered ones to settle the disputes and later the written information availed to the patient or the relatives. This is done when explaining the importance of management of medication information to the patient or the surrogate.
This goal is realistic as it would solve the many problems that arise from offering drugs that are not complementary. Medicines are chemicals and are intended for a specific use in a unique time. Thus when wrongly given, the effects can be dire. However, the implementation of this goal is marred with a myriad of challenges. First, the process of obtaining the complete list of all the medicines that every patient is taking is a strenuous and challenging work (Mueller et al., 2012) . The accuracy of such intervention would depend highly on the willingness and the ability of the patient to provide such data. If a client is unable to communicate, the collection of information will be impossible. One of the methods that can be used to solve the impediments is by the adoption of a more sophisticated centralized system that collects medication information from all the other points automatically. Also, the organization can teach the patients about the importance of medication reconciliation thus making them understand why they should keep an updated medication information.
In my setting, we have the centralized system where the information of all the prescribed medications can be obtained and are plotted against each patient’s name. When there is a need for ordering a new dosage or drug, the system is updated from the prescription desk and can be accessed anywhere within the setting.
In conclusion, healthcare providers face the challenges of errors either on the wrong identity or medication discrepancies in every aspect of treatment.
References
Joint Commission. (2014). National Patient Safety Goals Effective January 1, 2014. Hospital Accreditation Program.
Kim, J. K., Dotson, B., Thomas, S., & Nelson, K. C. (2013). Standardized patient identification and specimen labeling: a retrospective analysis on improving patient safety. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology , 68 (1), 53-56.
Mueller, S. K., Sponsler, K. C., Kripalani, S., & Schnipper, J. L. (2012). Hospital-based medication reconciliation practices: a systematic review. Archives of internal medicine , 172 (14), 1057-1069.
