Enhancing Patient Safety: Reducing Medical Errors and Adverse Events

It’s no secret that there are some difficult systemic challenges to address in medicine. A recent survey revealed that addressing issues with the quality of patient care is a priority for many nursing staff members. The fact that this is a forefront issue when many nurses face challenging conditions speaks volumes about the empathy of healthcare staff.

One element nurses and administrators can collaborate on to serve this priority for improving patient care is reducing the potential for medical errors and adverse events. Unfortunately, mistakes can seriously impact patient outcomes, affecting the efficacy of their treatment and overall experience. The good news is that there are practical ways to enhance patient safety, some of which we’re going to explore.

Designing Tailored Safety Protocols

It’s difficult to reduce medical errors and adverse events when there’s an unclear approach to safety. A solid structural framework helps ensure the consistency of measures and supports a culture of risk management. While there are general safety measures for all medical facilities, each space will have its challenges. Therefore, it’s best to take a tailored approach to designing effective safety protocols.

What do we mean by safety protocols? In essence, they are step-by-step plans that guide staff in performing each task safely and with minimal risk of error. Plans should prioritize clarity, communicate the high attention to detail required, and highlight the resources available for staff to complete these tasks. Certainly, nurses have the expertise to safeguard the well-being of everyone involved. Nevertheless, when administrators create solid protocols, most of the ambiguity is removed from operations.

Nursing and other staff should be involved in designing these protocols. Their daily interactions with the nuances of tasks tend to mean nurses have a better understanding of the hazards and how to address them practically. This doesn’t just pertain to patient care, but also the hazards staff face in the workplace, such as violence. One recent report found that 55% of healthcare professionals felt that violence policies are inadequate or ineffective. Involving nurses more meaningfully in policy design can be a route to mitigating these types of adverse events.

Prioritizing Staff Wellness

Facilities and their administrators have a duty to staff welfare. In a job as stressful as nursing, one recent study found that healthcare workers highlighted workplace stressors represented 49% of total work-life stressors. Issues like overwork and exhaustion are not just toxic to employees. They can also lead to errors, overlooked actions, and disrupted patient outcomes.

When focusing on staff well-being, one area leaders and nurses should collaborate on is gaining a better understanding of the potential reasons behind fatigue. Getting insufficient sleep due to late or unpredictable work schedules is a common factor, as is poor diet among professionals who feel they need to rush meals at work. Stress and anxiety may also put the body in an extended flight or fight mode that disrupts sleep, triggers insomnia, and affects exhaustion.

Alongside holding regular meetings to seek feedback, facilities need to change on a systemic level. This might include adapting scheduling approaches to ensure that nurses aren’t risking exhaustion with overlong shifts. It can also involve providing relevant resources that help address staff’s specific challenges.

For instance, those exposed to stressful conditions may benefit from access to subsidized therapy sessions or tools for relaxation, like guided meditation. Even making healthy snacks per the staff’s dietary requirements can boost energy, support efficiency, and minimize errors.

Streamlining with Technology

Some issues that influence medical errors and adverse events are related to inefficient administration. This includes mistakes with medical records and paperwork that put additional time stress on nursing staff. By adopting technological solutions that help streamline these tasks, medical facilities can provide nurses with accurate data and efficient operations that help safeguard patient well-being.

Some examples of these tools include the following.

Records Management Platforms

Effective medical records management involves maintaining the integrity of patients’ medical histories while safeguarding the privacy of that data. Software platforms that enable this provide nursing staff with centralized access to electronic records that are not only easy to search but also automatically updated across the system as changes occur.

In many cases, these tools feature robust counter-intrusion measures that prevent both unauthorized access and tampering with records. The result is that nurses can provide improved quality of care with reduced bandwidth for the errors poor records management can cause.

Artificial Intelligence Software

AI has an increasing presence in healthcare spaces. While these tools certainly can’t replace the expertise or empathy of nursing staff, they can help to streamline some tasks. For instance, AI data entry tools can handle unnecessarily repetitive administration that diverts attention from direct patient care. Not to mention that it can minimize human error. Some platforms can also analyze patient data to make tailored treatment plans. Nevertheless, in using AI to reduce errors, nursing staff needs to be vigilant of the results of these tools, reviewing for accuracy and potential bias.

Conclusion

Reducing medical errors and adverse events helps enhance safety and improve patient outcomes. Some ways to approach this require attention on systemic levels, including developing tailored safety protocols and leveraging streamlining technology. When administrators and nurses meaningfully collaborate on finding and implementing solutions, everyone involved benefits.

Amanda Winstead is a writer from the Portland area with a background in communications and a passion for telling stories. Along with writing, she enjoys traveling, reading, working out, and going to concerts. If you want to follow her writing journey, or even just say hi you can find her on Twitter at @AmandaWinsteadd.

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