The article “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System” explains the effects of medical errors in patient safety. These errors include diagnostic, treatment, preventive, and, others. These errors not only lead to death but also significant tolls like increased costs and loss of trust in the health care system. Most errors are due to faulty systems, processes, and conditions leading to mistakes or people failing to prevent mistakes . They way to solving these mistakes is to design health care systems that make it safer or harder for people to do mistakes.
To Err is Human
The article “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System” recommends a four-tier safety approach to prevent medical errors. One of the recommendations was establishing a national focus to create leadership, research, tools, and protocols to improve the knowledge of safety. The second recommendation was the development of a public mandatory reporting system and encourage health care organizations and practitioners to develop and participate in the voluntary reporting system. The third was to raise performance standards and expectations of safety improvement. The third was the implementation of safety systems in health care organizations (Kohn, Corrigan, & Donaldson, 2000) .
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Today, medical information systems ensure that the practitioners have the right health information on a patient to prevent diagnostic errors. There are laws that govern negligence in health care practitioners. These laws ensure accountability in health care organizations to ensure patients’ safety. Information systems allow health care staff to have a background on the patient to ensure they are a ware of the health risks. Patient Care systems ensure that a practitioner has the needed knowledge on treatment administration and dosage provision. These systems ensure communication across the organization enabling every medical staff to be aware of expected health care for each patient.
Informatics and Patient Safety
Informatics in the health care organizations has enabled the practitioner to deal with the errors in the “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System” article. Today, systems allow the practitioners to make correct decisions. They have all the information they need to carry out their functions – diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Knowledgebase for the practitioners is vast enough ensuring there are no loopholes for error (McGonigle & Mastrin, 2018) .
Informatics provides data on all patients ensuring that health care is personalized to every patient’s need. This is one way how medical care current rules has transitioned to the new rules as discussed in “The Quality Chasm Series: Implications for Nursing”. The current rule is professional autonomy drives variability but informatics has allowed for customization based on patients’ needs and values (Table 3) (Wakefield, 2008) . The patient needs and values are provided via the medical information systems.
Conclusion
Information technology has helped health care organizations deal with medical errors by providing information and knowledge necessary for health care provision. Practitioners are able to access patient information and make diagnostic, treatment, and prevention decisions. This help from informatics helps prevent medical errors hence improve patient safety.
References
Kohn, L., Corrigan, J., & Donaldson, M. (2000). To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Washington D.C.: National Academy Press.
McGonigle, D., & Mastrin, K. G. (2018). Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge (4th ed.). Brighton, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Wakefield, M. K. (2008). The Quality Chasm Series: Implications for Nursing. In R. G. Hughes, Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US).
