According to Wang et al., (2015), patient safety entails the prevention of adverse effects and reduction of errors to patients while undergoing treatment, diagnosis, and general care. It involves the responsibility to prevent, reduce, report, and analyze medical errors and mistakes that may result in adverse effects on a patient and within the healthcare facility. According to Cherry and Jacob (2016), over the years, the Agency maintains that general patient care has improved as patient-acquired conditions reduce, especially between the years 2014 and 2017. Between the years, healthcare facilities in the United States applied patient safety measures that prevented over 360k hospital-acquired conditions. The measures in prevented over 9,000 deaths and saved over $3.0 billion in the US (Wang et al., 2015). Besides ensuring patient safety and recovery, patient safety measures play a critical role in enhancing healthcare services in addition to a reduction in healthcare costs.
Measures and strategies that aim at improving the safety of patients play a vital part in enhancing healthcare services. Healthcare professionals play a central role in ensuring that patient safety measures and strategies are upheld across all the sectors of patient service provision. It is the linchpin of quality care and experience (Wang et al., 2015). At the same time, it is not the amenities that stand out, but the quality of the service provider to prevent and minimize patient exposure to harm and risk. It is the convergence of quality, the experience of care, and safety. Other pillars of patient safety and concern also play an important part in achieving the safety of patients. They include empathy, love in addition to quality communication framework.
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Cost Saving
In the United States alone, over $1.7 million preventable infections occur each year. The number accounts for over 100,000 deaths with an estimate that the country incurs $17 - $29 billion annually in medical care expenses, disability and wasted worker productivity (Wang et al., 2015). According to the National Partnership (NPP), patient safety is one of the top priorities of the country (Cherry & Jacob 2016). A specific focus is placed on lowering mortality rates, infections, and adverse events. Cherry and Jacob (2016) maintained that patient safety reduces the amount of money that goes to administrative functions aimed at treating patients who have received injuries that include burns and cuts. Costs are also lowered in treating unrelated health complications that arise from unsafe infections and unsafely care. At the same time, patient harm, careless infections, an injury put unnecessary pressure on loved ones, their families, the community, and the people.
Wang et al., (2015) maintained that patient care measures help administrative units of healthcare facilities concentrate on essential services that helping the facility utilizes finances in the most appropriate way. For example, automated surveillance help healthcare facilities reduce costs incurred in repair costs, legal costs in addition to production costs. Investing in safety measures is bound to create significant value in reducing costs that may be used in adverse effects such as failure costs. The same is similar to air travels, investment decisions, in addition to expenses incurred in rectifying the arising mistakes.
Common types of serious safety measures include medical errors, patient falls, pressure ulcers, death at the time of interventions, venous thromboembolism, and healthcare infections such as nosocomial infections (Wang et al., 2015). According to the World Health Organization, strategic policies that aim to reduce patient injuries cost less than resources used in treating harm in a patient. Patient harm measures entail strategic policies that protect both the healthcare facility and medical professionals and the patients together (Cherry & Jacob 2016). Thus preventive measures help healthcare facilities in creating a favorable environment for patient care, thus reducing any unnecessary costs that may be incurred during service provision.
The Function and Role of the Joint Commission
TJC oversees the certification and accreditation of healthcare facilities and programs in the US. It is recognized as a symbol of quality, reflecting the body’s commitment to achieving set performance standards. According to Graban (2016) the primary mandate of the body is to enhance Healthcare in alliance with relevant participants and to motivate them to excel ineffective healthcare service delivery and to uphold high safety and quality service. At the same time, its vision statement is aimed at ensuring that people experience security and high-quality healthcare services all over the country.
The Joint Commission’s primary function is to oversee intentional accreditation to hospitals across the country. It also has the mandate of developing performance standards that focuses on patient care and critical operation (McKenna et al. 2004). The Commission’s surveys guide healthcare organizations in evaluating their performances, patient safety, quality care, and effective treatment. It plays the role of enhancing and gauging the healthcare organization’s performance, especially in patient-centered care, safety, and treatment. It also develops and establishes standards that are measured from the patient’s interactions and feedback in addition to other government agencies reports (Cherry & Jacob 2016). The primary goals of its accreditation process include continuous standards compliance, organization ownership, and helping in organizational identification and ownership. In its outlined patient safety objectives, the Commission has the role of ensuring that patient safety standards are maintained in addition to getting expert support.
Contribution to Patient safety and Future Role
Medical practitioners and nurses, among other healthcare service providers, play a critical role within the healthcare sector. Nurses will have the primary duty of expanding access to healthcare services in addition to improving healthcare quality at a reasonable and lower cost. They have the role and responsibility of engaging in research and generating evidence to generate safety and quality. According to Graban (2016), research help in building a scientific foundation, especially for preventive nursing practice, clinical practice, in addition to patient outcomes. In the future, nurses will have the role of redesigning nursing training and education towards achieving a more comprehensive and expanded clinical knowledge and training framework. Redesigning education and training help in emphasizing clinical practice within multiple settings.
In the future, nurses, together with other healthcare providers, also have the primary duty of diversifying their workforce toward reducing health disparities and ensuring that healthcare service is provided to people of all backgrounds. Nurses will also have the responsibility of embracing technology towards learning the latest medical techniques in addition to new systems of medication and administration. At the same time, they will need to develop leadership at all levels and to help, mentoring, and improving one another. They must stay engaged with all other professionals towards providing quality care in addition to patient safety.
Patient Safety
The role of nurses is very instrumental concerning patient safety. A nurse ought to adhere to all safety measures outlined towards improving and maintaining patient safety. At the same time, a nurse must communicate all safety measures and regulations to the patient to foster a healthy attitude towards security within the healthcare facility. For example, the nurse should ensure that all procedures are followed keenly to reduce chances of wrong medication and wrong treatment procedures (Graban 2016). At the same time, the nurse should ensure that all preventive measures are put into action to reduce the chances of harm or risk to the patient. Fatigue is a common cause of fatal injuries, errors, and poor judgment. A nurse should ensure that shifts are handled professionally, and all other nurses keep the time of their change to minimize fatigue. A nurse should also have open and effective communication with all other healthcare personnel within the facility to reduce errors and improve efficiency and effective administration.
Responsibility of the Chief Nursing Officer
The chief nurse is considered as the administrative person within the healthcare facility as far as patient safety is concerned. They are mandated to maintain patient care standards in addition to clinical professionalism within and outside the health facility. A chief nurse has the responsibility of implementing and establishing nursing procedures and strategies towards ensuring that service delivery is following the set standards. Regarding patient safety, a chief nurse has the primary duty to formulate and implement safety measures and strategies towards ensuring that all risks are eliminated or reduced to a minimum. As a leader, a chief nurse must ensure that all safety measures within the health facility are operational and up to standard (Hall et al., 2016). The holder of the title also acts as the coordinator, organizer, and administration of all safety measures within the health facility. He or she must ensure that all procedures and safety standards are maintained by the staff from the lowest rank staff to the head of the facility. At the same time, the chief nurse must liaise with all relevant bodies and professionals in ensuring that the latest and most updated safety measures are enacted and put in place within the health facility.
Conclusion
The paper has discussed various concepts regarding the safety of the patient and the place of nurses within the healthcare facility. At the same time, the article has presented the future roles of the nurse and the functions of the Commission following healthcare standards and quality. Reduction of costs by following safety measures has also been identified as key strategies to minimizing the high costs attributed to poor safety measures. Patient safety is very critical towards the provision of quality and patient-centered care. Lack of safety standards within the healthcare facility exposes patients to high risks that range from opportunistic infections to body injuries. Strategic safety measures are aimed at preventing the dangers often occasioned with harming the patient. The nurse, together with the chief nurse has a critical role in ensuring that safety measures are adhered to in addition to upholding the highest and quality set standards as set forth by the Joint Commission. The Joint Commission has a broad mandate and plays a significant role in ensuring that health standards such as safety are upheld and adhered to by all health facilities. Quality patient care can only be realized by maintaining high standards of management that include upholding set safety measures within the healthcare facility.
References
Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. R. (2016). Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management . Elsevier Health Sciences. http://readpdfprint.info/contemporary-nursing-issues-trends-and-management-renew-reserve-books-barbara-cherry-susan-r-jacob.pdf
Graban, M. (2016). Lean hospitals: improving quality, patient safety, and employee engagement . Productivity Press. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429251351
Hall, L. H., Johnson, J., Watt, I., Tsipa, A., & O’Connor, D. B. (2016). Healthcare staff wellbeing, burnout, and patient safety: a systematic review. PloS one , 11 (7), e0159015. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0159015
McKenna, H. P., Hasson, F., & Keeney, S. (2004). Patient safety and quality of care: the role of the health care assistant. Journal of Nursing Management , 12 (6), 452-459. https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/45471336/Patient_safety_and_quality_of_care_the_r20160509-13996-1wr846z.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DPatient_safety_and_quality_of_care_the_r.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20190614%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20190614T131740Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=f1ae84bd17fd2e673124834131e20c8c08c33c722ed5a0314990108288328fd4
Wang, H. F., Jin, J. F., Feng, X. Q., Huang, X., Zhu, L. L., Zhao, X. Y., & Zhou, Q. (2015). Quality improvements in decreasing medication administration errors made by nursing staff in an academic medical center hospital: a trend analysis during the journey to Joint Commission International accreditation and in the post-accreditation era. Therapeutics and clinical risk management , 11 , 393. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4354453/
