Risk Management Applications in Hospitals

The concept, usage and learning of risk management phenomenon are important for all institutions in healthcare industry. The most important purpose of risk management in healthcare industry is learning from errors, it is these human errors that pave the way for us to learn prepare and not repeat these errors again. These errors can lead to a medical incident and the learning from them occurs when these incidents are discussed within teams. Most of these incidents are not discussed as individuals and teams tend to suppress these incidents mainly due to the seriousness it carries for the patient and their loved ones, for medical staff and for the hospital. The medical practice demands perfection in analysis and cure, admitting and dealing with human errors becomes difficult for the medical staff. In order to build confidence in staff to come forth and discuss these incidents there is a need to change internal culture so learning can occur (Allnutt, 1987).

One of the main purposes of risk management in healthcare industry is to deal with the increased cost of insurance premium by creating and adopting risk management practices, systems and techniques. Although a third party liability but if an incident or a complication occurs it results in to a high cost. There are legal requirements that are enforced on hospitals for providing good quality of care and management of patient.

Our operating hospitals have upon them the moral duty for developing an approach that can deal with issues when they arise and for providing quality in patient management by using best practices of risk management. A proactive approach to risk management and dealing with the issue before it occurs is still at infancy in our hospitals (Duckers, 2009).

Taking in to consideration, the purpose, importance and role risk management plays in a hospital we can define it as, ' a systematic and on-going controlling process and set of activities that can result in reducing risk for patients to a minimum level'.

For instance an emergency procedure if defined as a process can indentify certain loopholes that can be catered preemptively. One can also consider the effects of failure of such an adopted process and design alternatives for example if a doctor is not available to look after a patient that is rushed in an emergency nurses can calm down the situation by providing basic medical treatment. Another approach for identifying and managing such risks in a hospital is an active inventory of real risks to patients. First a voluntary incident reporting system can be utilized as a tool for reporting and managing risks based on the theory of Near Miss Management System. Secondly training should be provided to the medical staff on risk management and usability of incident reporting system giving the awareness about the consequences that can result for individual medical staff, patient and the hospital. The crucial step is to encourage medical staff for identifying quality issues without worrying about the consequences beforehand and finally a reporting system on which a dedicated team can deliberate and provide solutions to potential threats and possible incidents. For proactively minimizing occurrence of incidents a set of minimum norms can be developed that each ward shall follow these set of norms include process control and steps for safety of patients. This set of norm should be discussed and agreed upon by doctors and nurses and should also decide responsibility and decision making power to the medical staff.
Once these steps are being adopted, an audit and feedback system is necessary for measuring effectiveness; this audit system should include, Feedback on performance to individual medical staff followed up by counseling session where change to an adopted practice can be suggested to the individual or a particular ward. In identifying…