Digital healthcare information systems impose new demands on healthcare professionals, and information security rules may induce stressful value conflicts, which the professional culture may help professionals to handle.
Figure 2 (abstract A1). CIRS-cases in terms of clustered risk areas A1 Critical incident reporting system in tertiary university hospital Gerald Sendlhofer, Veronika Gombotz, Peter Tiefenbacher, Karina Leitgeb, Gernot Brunner Executive Department for Quality and Risk Management, University Hospital Graz, Graz, Austria; Research Unit for Safety in Health, c/o Division of Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery, Department of Surgery, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria Correspondence: Gerald Sendlhofer (gerald.sendlhofer@klinikum-graz.at) Safety in Health 2018, 4(Suppl 1):A1
The objective of this study was to determine whether a cluster scheme of allergic immunotherapy (AIT), starting administration of the therapeutic extract with the highest available concentration vial (vial B) of Allergovit®, affords adequate safety and tolerance under conditions of routine clinical practice.
A wide range of methods have been used to assess the potential clinical importance of medication errors, but it is neither clear which should be used, nor how they compare. In this paper, we compare two methods of assessment, using a dataset of errors identified in the administration of intravenous infusions in English hospitals, to inform future comparisons between studies.
Current guidelines on the management of cancer pain include information referred to integral patient management, in order to get an improvement in their quality of care. The assessment of compliance with the recommendations in daily practice constitutes a necessary feedback mechanism for consolidating theoretical recommendations. The objective of the study was to evaluate the fulfilment of quality of care recommendations for patients with cancer pain in real clinical practice.
Most studies on occupational health and safety in home and community care focus on the health and safety of professional health care workers such as nurses and therapists and very few address the occupational health and safety of personal support workers (PSWs) who provide 70–80% of community care in the home. The PSW Health and Safety Matters! project provides evidence on the health and safety of PSWs working in the home and community in Ontario.
Proper pain assessment is a core component in management of trauma patients but prior literature has suggested that pain management is inadequate in emergency settings. With the development of emergency medicine in low-income countries (LIC), the procedures for pain assessment and management of trauma patients have not been well studied and protocols have not been established. We aimed to describe practices of pain assessment and management in an emergency department in Tanzania.
Continuity of patient care is achieved by the clear and concise transfer of patient clinical information from one health care provider to another during handoff. Effective communication is a vital factor in providing safe patient care. Communication failure in a health care setting could lead to serious medical errors. Sharing patient-specific health care information during handoff requires situational awareness. In the hospital setting, most of the communication related to patient care occurs between nurses and physicians. Challenges of communication among health care providers are not limited to differences in training and reporting expectations. The Joint Commission, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI), and World Health Organization (WHO) recognize SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) as an effective communication tool for patients’ handoff. SBAR is a reliable and validated communication tool which has shown a reduction in adverse events in a hospital setting, improvement in communication among health care providers, and promotion of patient safety. This narrative review has highlighted the challenges of communication among health care providers, use of the SBAR tool for effective handoff and transfer of patient care in various health care settings, and comparison of SBAR tool with other communication tools to assess the effective communication and limitations of SBAR communication tool.
The proportion of elderly in the population in Sweden is increasing. Older adults are more vulnerable to disease and disability which in turn increases the prevalence of negative events as pressure ulcers, malnutrition, falls, and oral health problems.
Surgical site infections are one of the most common healthcare-associated infections in low- and middle-income countries, which cause prolonged hospital stays and increase patient susceptibility to other nosocomial infections. Hence, this study aimed to determine the magnitude and associated factors of surgical site infections among women who underwent obstetric surgeries in Felegehiwot Specialized Hospital, Amhara, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia in 2018.
The risks of poor information transfer across healthcare settings are well documented, particularly for medication. Various patient-held tools have been designed to hold information about patients’ medicines to improve information transfer. Anecdotal evidence suggests some are more widely implemented than others, but there has been little research exploring the reasons why. Our objectives were to explore the facilitators and barriers to implementation of patient handheld medication information from the perspective of pharmacy staff, to understand why some tools are more widely implemented than others and to make recommendations as appropriate.
Patients in nursing homes are at risk of adverse events, representing a highly vulnerable group that is chronically weak and cognitively or physically reduced. To prevent adverse events, knowledge of patient safety culture can act as a basis for nursing homes’ own organizational improvement initiatives. There is scarcity of longitudinal studies exploring the sustainability or variability of safety culture in nursing homes. This study therefore describes the variability in staff perceptions of patient safety culture over time in a cross-sectional sample of Norwegian nursing homes, and tests the influence of nursing homes’ own organizational initiatives.
There are major challenges in ensuring medication safety and preventing adverse drug events in older people. Older people are especially vulnerable to drug-to-drug interactions (DDIs). However, when older patients are transferred from hospital to home care, information related to DDIs is limited. The objectives of this study were to (1) identify and describe potential DDIs in older patients discharged from hospital to home care and (2) identify patient and hospital transfer characteristics associated with the potential DDIs.
Immunization rates among the adult population in Saudi Arabia fall below desired targets, urging the need to expand this service in the community. Community pharmacists are recognized as highly accessible healthcare professionals, and community pharmacies—because of the convenient location and extended working hours—offer a unique place to provide a vaccination service. The aims of this study were to assess community pharmacists’ readiness and willingness to provide an immunization service and to identify the factors that may support the implementation of such service in Riyadh region, Saudi Arabia.
Patient education facilitates imparting information to the patients and their caregivers by the health professionals and others that alter the patients’ health behaviors, improve their health status and upright health safety at home. It strengthens the clinician-patient relationship by demonstrating respect and enhances patients’ feelings of self-efficacy resulting in improved health, well-being, safety, and outcomes. It plays a vital role to prevent deadly but easily manageable fatalities that have been occurring at home in patients with various medical devices for permanent disabilities. In this commentary, the obligation of pre-discharge patient education and ensuring standard care at home for the patients with a lifelong tracheostomy is emphasized in particular.
The International High 5s Project was developed by the World Health Organisation to address major concerns about patient safety. The Standard Operating Protocol (SOP) for ensuring medication accuracy during transitional care is a part of the High 5s Project. The impetus behind medication reconciliation is to prevent adverse drug events by decreasing the rate of undocumented discrepancies as patients move from one level of care to another. The aim of this article is to present the results of the French experimentation. During 5 years, 9 healthcare facilities implemented the SOP Medication Reconciliation at admission. Eligible inpatients included patients aged over 65 years admitted through the Emergency Department. The indicator for the rate of undocumented discrepancies is assessed as the time required per reconciliation. From 2010 to 2014, 27 447 inpatients were reconciled (14.0% of eligible patients for reconciliation). The mean of undocumented discrepancies per patient was 1.7 (46 188). Among the undocumented discrepancies, unintentional medication errors which are at the same time non documented and non intentional stand out (however one health facility used a different methodology): the mean of intercepted and corrected medication errors was 0.9 (21 320 for 22 863 patients). All were resolved during the collaborative exchange between pharmacists and physicians. The mean time to perform the reconciliation was about 31.8 min (IC 95% [31.6; 32.0]). In France the medication reconciliation process has demonstrated to be a powerful strategy to reduce undocumented discrepancies and in particular medication errors. The next steps should focus on extending the process either to all stages of the transitional care or to different types of patients (other than Emergency room patients) or health sectors.
Internationally, patient safety is increasingly seen as a priority area, and improving patient safety highly depends on achieving a culture that supports and encourages health care staffs to report their errors or near misses without fear of punishment. In Ethiopia, however, patient safety culture is a relatively new focus, and little is known regarding the current status of patient safety culture in public hospitals. The purpose of the current study was thus, aimed to assess the views and perceptions of health care professionals about patient safety culture in public hospitals in Ethiopia.
Certification and accreditation are widely used to achieve quality and safety in health care but are also questioned regarding their assumed effects. This is a challenge for policymakers and managers, since adoption of these regimes can have a circumstantial impact upon organizations. This study’s aim was to explore how external conditions catalyzed and triggered organizational change and internal sensemaking processes as part of an ISO 9001 certification process.
Policies for health technologies such as medical devices are essential and contribute to improved quality of healthcare. The regulation, assessment, and management represent important functions of medical devices. Insufficiently developed interactions between these functions impact the quality of delivered healthcare. To date studies lack to analyse these functions in a broad way. The aim of this study is to analyse the regulation, assessment, and management of orthopaedic medical devices in Mexico and how they shape healthcare.
Progress towards Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 5 is uneven across different countries. Maternal and neonatal deaths occur mainly in developing countries especially in rural areas and among the poor communities due to underutilization of maternal services. It is evident that group prenatal care (GPC) model could improve health-care utilization among pregnant women that suit in developing countries. The GPC model has introduced in a public facility in the context of Bangladesh, and this study intended to estimate the incremental cost of introducing GPC model over the existing government health-care facility.
