Assignment: Patient Safety in Case Management Essay

Assignment: Patient Safety in Case Management Essay

Assignment Patient Safety in Case Management Essay

 

In the modern era of healthcare delivery, patient safety, and improvement of care have seen a significant debate. Through proper research that facilitates the efficient collection of data, scholars have identified when and how medical errors take place, and hospitals have put in place measures to deal with them (An, Kim, Park, Moon & Park, 2017). The above is in line with the Joint Commission’s annual goals on patient safety. This paper will focus on some of the processes such as hand-offs care, patient education, access to services, and medication regimen reconciliation that contribute towards patients’ safety.

According to the Joint Commission, handoffs, which entails passing patient-specific information from one care provider to another, is critical in ensuring patient safety regardless of the level. The most recent research shows that more than 1.6 million handoffs take place annually in a typical teaching and research hospital (An et al., 2017).  Poor or handoffs that are ineffective have been implicated in progressive information loss, a concept called funneling, and is marked with omissions coupled with inaccuracies in the information that is shared among clinicians.  For the longest time, poor handoffs have been the leading cause of medication errors. In a bid to reduce the medication errors, which occur during the handoffs in the US, the Joint Commission now requires all the healthcare facilities to standardize the communication activity among the physicians and nurses during the handoffs by putting in place handoff tools and protocols.  Additionally, nurses are advised to adhere to the standard checklist that encompasses avoiding interruptions by selecting a quiet location to conduct the handoff. Moreover, use of a typical style of communication in the name of SBAR, which stands for Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendations also forms part of the handoff protocols.

The challenges that face handoffs entail communication behavior, information-sharing practices, and human factors, and they negatively impact on workflow. Researchers have cited social factors encompassing issues such as stress, fatigue, memory loss, multitasking, and interruptions as being the leading cause of ineffective transitions of care (World Health Organization, 2017).  On top of that, handoff failures, as well as a deviation, can be a result of missing or inadequate documentation, ineffective institutional protocols, and limited education and training on handoff skills.

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The leading cause of medication-related injury and death in the world involves adverse drug reactions.  The majority of the events occur secondary to poor communication between health professionals as well as health care providers and patients during

transitions or handoffs.  It is estimated that 50% of the medication errors, which take place in hospitals occur during admission or discharge from a clinical unit (World Health Organization, 2017).  It is worth noting that improper taking of the patient’s medication history during entry or recording in the record book or during the process of prescribing medicines on admission are the instances when errors occur.  Research shows that more than 60% of the patients’ history of medications prescribed during hospitalization contains some few errors and majority of the patients do not have a clarity of mind concerning the medicines that were ordered in hospital and those they are supposed to take home (An et al., 2017).

Mistakes in taking medication history can have such negative impacts as discontinuation of therapy, restarting some of the discontinued medicines, and the inability to recognize a drug related issue. More than 30% of hospital prescribing errors are a result of inaccurate or incomplete medication history during hospital admission. Consequently, the Joint Commission recommends that clinicians should find out the medicines that a client is taking and then make sure the patient is aware of the medications that they will receive once they are at home. Moreover, one should advice the patient to have a list of medicines that they are taking every time that they visit a doctor.

Patient Education

With the current trends of consumerism in healthcare, patients are playing an active role in the management of their conditions in such situations as medical decisions. The majority of the patients demand transparency and want to get explanations on the treatment options that are available to them. On top of that, patients in the modern era desire to get information from the physician on the rationale behind their decisions, which is encouraging since patients should have an opinion in their care (World Health Organization, 2017). Research shows that patients that are well informed have better outcomes. Some of the most common medication errors can be averted by the type of questions that the patients ask (An et al., 2017).  For example, if a patient is aware of the pre-operative site marking and the draping procedure that they should expect as well the specific anesthesia that they should receive, they will be vigilant to ensure that the correct procedure is performed on the right part of the body.

Access to the Services

Access to healthcare services is one of the leading factors in ensuring patient safety.  The majority of patients from low socioeconomic communities have limited access to care due to inadequate health insurance coverage. On top of that, a majority of the patients have challenges in getting the healthcare provider that will offer them care without fear of judgment, for example, treatment of STIs. Therefore, hospitals with fewer healthcare providers compromise the safety of these patients since they cannot be served in the best possible way (World Health Organization, 2017). On top of that, hospitals should ensure that they have stocked the necessary medications to minimize situations whereby there are rapid disease progressions, for example, cancer in the absence of certain essential drugs.

Communication Among Providers (Exchange of Newest NPSG)

Current research indicates that poor communication among the healthcare professionals as a significant contributor to medication errors coupled harming of patients.  According to the Joint Commission reports, communication failures are implicated in more than 70% of the sentinel events (Vasconcelos, Arruda, Freire & Carvalho, 2018). The National Council of State Boards of Nursing Reports have nurses pointing out communication issues as the primary cause of medication errors.  People should be clear in their minds that communication failure in the acute care settings has the potential of causing patient harm, prolonged hospital stays coupled with poor work satisfaction of the caregiver, and ultimately high turnover rates (Vasconcelos, Arruda, Freire & Carvalho, 2018).  To promote proper communication among the physicians, there should be cultural competence educations, and the National Patient Safety Goals should be appropriately communicated and shared among the physicians and nurses (Hall, Johnson, Watt, Tsipa & O’Connor, 2016).  Therefore, collaboration is one of the best methods of improving communication in the sense that one group of the healthcare team should not be blamed when errors occur.

Assignment: Patient Safety in Case Management Essay Conclusion

Patient safety has been at the center stage of the current healthcare delivery. Proper dissemination of information among healthcare providers is essential in preventing medication errors, especially during the handoffs.  On top of that, patients should be encouraged to have a detailed list of any medications they have ever taken to avoid such issues as discontinuation of therapy, resumption of drugs that had been discontinued, and sub-optimum care.

Review the National Patient Safety Goals. Then, consider how the following five processes ensure safety/quality improvement in case management practice:

1. transitions or hand-offs of care

2. medication regimen reconciliation

3. patient education

4. access to services

5. communication among providers (exchange of newest NPSG)

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Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.

Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.

If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.

I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.

As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:

Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.

Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

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Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• Student paper example
• Citing Sources
• The Writing Center is a great resource