Health outcomes help in better understanding the efficiency of a treatment plan. Health outcomes are focused on improving the patient’s quality of life (Tinker, 2018). The quality of life on a patient is multifaceted and subjective. There are several health outcomes, such as patient safety, patient experience, mortality, and timeliness of care. Of these, patient safety is a healthcare outcome that is of interest to my practice. Patient safety or safety of care is a patient outcome that deals with medical errors. It is defined as activities that remove or minimize conceivable mistakes and injuries to patients (Kim et al., 2015). Patient safety as a health outcome is fueled by the simple wish to protect the patient’s right to safety and the legal principles and obligations of medical teams. Although most of the medical errors are curable, there are those that rare lethal (Kim et al., 2015). There are two common safety of care outcome measures used; hospital-acquired infections and skin breakdown.
Hospital-acquired infections are caused by fungal, viral, and bacterial pathogens. Hospital-acquired infections are those infections that patients get in healthcare service units or hospitals that appear within the first 48 hours or more after hospital admissions (Kim et al., 2015). They can also occur within 30 days after hospital discharge (Tinker, 2018). Hospital-acquired infections can be measured using several ways. One of these ways is the use of prevalence measures as they can capture hospital-acquired infections on patients with longer lengths of stay and for longer durations (Rutledge-Taylor et al., 2012). A point prevalence survey will measure, at the time the survey is conducted, the percentage of patients infected with hospital-acquired infections (Rutledge-Taylor et al., 2012). The survey is normally conducted within a day thus help in quantifying the burden of the disease.
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References
Kim, L., Lyder, C. H., McNeese ‐ Smith, D., Leach, L. S., & Needleman, J. (2015). Defining attributes of patient safety through a concept analysis. Journal of advanced nursing, 71(11), 2490-2503.
Rutledge-Taylor, K., Matlow, A., Gravel, D., Embree, J., Le Saux, N., Johnston, L., ... & Roth, V. (2012). A point prevalence survey of health care-associated infections in Canadian pediatric inpatients. American journal of infection control, 40(6), 491-496.
Tinker, A. (2018). The top seven healthcare outcome measures and the three measurement essentials. Health Catalyst. Retrieved from https://www.healthcatalyst.com/insights/top-7-healthcare-outcome-measures
