In chapter 10, the various strategies that can be used to reduce the risks in various departments are provided. Those strategies in return help the Hospital save a lot financially if the people in those departments follow the proactive liability reduction. The risk managers need to get help from the healthcare professional in terms of practices, guidelines, and review so as the recommendations can be put into performance appropriately. The issues discussed in this chapter are things like managing physicians, professional Practice Acts, Professional Discipline, and various misconducts experience in the day to day activities in the hospital. In chapter 11, the major departments that are exposed to these high risks include; emergency room, obstetrics and neonatology, surgery and anesthesia and diagnostic imaging. The emergency medicine includes those issues that need immediate attention, or immediate action examples of those issues include; Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor, Pre-hospital services, Dept. capabilities, and staffing.
Obstetrics and Neonatology, on the other hand, is a department where there is a lot of technology in use hence expensive. The issues in this department include ethical dilemmas, infant transport standard guidelines, prenatal, and perinatal care. There is also three levels of care in this department. Surgery and Anaesthesia is the other department in which operations take place, and the claims are usually co-dependent. The issues in this department consist of negligence and malpractice, surgical service staff, intraoperative risks among many more. The last department exposed to the high risks is Diagnostic Imaging; this is where the image of the human body is created using several methods like X-rays, ultrasound, and many more. The issues in this department are things like malpractice allegations errors radiation exposure and many more.
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Chapter 12 is all about the infection control strategies that can act as a risk reduction in any department. The infection control system reduces risks to things like the malpractices in various departments and also enhances the safety of the visitors, the health personnel’s, and patients. The chapter states how infections such as that of tuberculosis can be controlled. Risk management in psychiatric is what is contained in Chapter 13 Psychiatrists are patients with mental illness that can be acute or chronic. The chapter talks about how they should be treated and taken care of; for instance, they have the right to choose their type of medication or the right to refuse the medication among many more.
Roles and scope of care
The emergency department has the main role of giving out and providing urgent care to patients that have experienced traumatic injuries like heart attacks, major illnesses, or any other urgent medical issues. The scope of care in this department has five main steps. The first step is triage, where the nurses try to find out which patient requires the most immediate medication (Holroyd, 2007) . At this stage, the nurse in charge of the patient may check the patient's medical history as the patient receives treatment or even look at the patient’s symptoms and try to come up with a diagnosis after several tests.
The second step is registration, where the patient's information and condition are recorded down to help get the right medication of the urgent condition at hand. The third step is treatment. At this point, the patient is given the right medication according to what was registered previously. Blood tests and even X-rays may also be performed at this stage maybe if the patient needs a blood transfusion and many other reasons. Re-evaluation is the other step in which the nurse in charge will look at the test results brought and then find out the right medication to add on the one previously used for better result. The patient's progress is also asked, and if he or she is doing well, the nurse will know what to do. The last step is discharged where the patient is left to go home only if the health has improved. Those discharged are given many precautions to avoid further attacks and injuries and advised accordingly. Therefore, generally, the care of the patients in this department is quite impressive, and the patients receive all the care they deserve because the nurses and physicians play those roles quite well.
Risks
One of the main risks in this department of the re-admitting of those patients treated in this department. First, the patients are treated in a hurry in that many tests are not done on the patient. The test made might not bring out all the causes of the attack; therefore, the patient is likely to come back to the same hospital with the same issue after a short period. The other great risk in this department is the cross infection, especially in case of an outbreak of an airborne disease or any other type of disease. The incoming patients who need immediate care will increase, leading to overcrowding where other patients that do not have the same disease will be in the same room. The risk of cross infection in such scenarios is high. The health personnel’s may also get infected in the process or visitors that have come to visit. The cross-infection may also occur due to the cross-contact the nurses have (Todd, 1993) . The other risk is overcrowding, in this case, the patients do not get adequate time for consultation, and the medical level will be of low quality because the doctors attending to the patients will want to get the waiting line moving instead of administering adequate services.
Strategies
The first strategy is to ensure that the treatment offered at this department is of high quality and that the tests should be done more carefully. The hospital can do these by putting well-trained technicians in the labs to deal with the physicians. The medications should be the best in that the treatment is somehow permanent and not temporal. The hospital will, in return make profits because most of their patients will trust them. The cross-infection can be controlled through the isolation of the affected patients with the outbreak at hand. It will ensure that the other patients in the same departments are not affected by the outbreak at hand. The nurses attending to these patients should be well dressed in protective outwears in that they will not contact the disease at hand. The nurses and physicians dealing with these kinds of patients should not attend to the other patients available; different nurses should be assigned (Hawley, 2000) . The issue of overcrowding can be handled by increasing the emergency department or by increasing the number of professionals in this department. The estimated time for the doctor-patient consultation should also be increased so that the patients receive quality treatment.
Conclusion
The chapters have helped me understand the various departments in hospitals that are faced with high risks and how to reduce those risks, for instance, the infection risk. The chapters have helped learn the various issues that are taken care of in different departments. The strategies provided have shown me that the hospitals can prevent many unnecessary losses by just following the strategies that the various hospital departments face. Therefore, for a hospital to be well manageable, various risks can be avoided in the different departments for the hospital to be a great success and save a lot.
References
Hawley, M., (2000). Nurse comforting strategies: perceptions of emergency department patients. In Clinical Nursing Research (pp. 441-459).
Holroyd, B. B., (2007). Impact of a triage liaison physician on emergency department overcrowding and throughput: a randomized controlled trial. In Academic Emergency Medine 14(8) (pp. 702-708).
Todd, K. H., (1993). Ethnicity as a risk factor for inadequate emergency department analgesia. In Jama (pp. 1537-1539).
