The task of improving quality and safety in healthcare is a complex one indeed, and each independent healthcare organization is going to have its own needs and priorities on how to best achieve this. Systematic strategy is key along with a strict adherence to evidence based practices. It is only then that a healthcare facility can begin to make lasting changes for the benefit of clinicians and patients.
¶ … quality and safety issues on healthcare delivery absolutely cannot be underestimated. When quality and safety issues are addressed head on, healthcare delivery improves for the better and patients receive a higher quality of care. The fundamental issues are thus: people are living with an increased life expectancy and a higher rate of survival. This means that the increase range of treatment options put an additional burden on professional healthcare and in lieu of that, a great deal of literature conducted has identified significant shortfalls in the way that healthcare is currently delivered. Main issues that have emerged from this literature are that the way that healthcare is that healthcare is often delivered in a risky fashion, and that failings like these contribute to avoidable morbidity and mortality, and healthcare expenditure. "There have been substantial developments in information technology hardware and software capabilities over recent decades and there is now considerable potential to apply these technological developments in relation to aspects of healthcare provision" (Car et al., 2008). In many ways, one of the most overwhelming issues about how healthcare delivery (safety and quality specificially) can be improved is via the advancements made in technology and streamlining these processes.
Healthcare delivery needs to be more cognizant of also the risks involved in these advanced technologies, as well as all shortcomings they might showcase (Car et al., 2008). Thus, while it's important that the technology is strong, and that all professionals have been well-educated on properly using it, what's even more important is the fact that the professionals make up a harmonious collaborative unit that can work in an interdependent manner.
Value of Interprofessional Collaboration for Improving Healthcare Quality and Safety
The value of interprofessional collaboration is essential for improving healthcare quality and safety and absolutely cannot be underestimated. Interprofessional collaboration in healthcare creates a thorough, interlocked team, that can anticipate problems before they happen, work to prevent them, and give patients the most relevant and effective treatments possible. "Today's patients have complex health needs and typically require more than one discipline to address issues regarding their health status (1). In 2001 a recommendation by the Institute of Medicine Committee on Quality of Health Care in America suggested that healthcare professionals working in interprofessional teams can best communicate and address these complex and challenging needs (1, 2). This interprofessional approach may allow sharing of expertise and perspectives to form a common goal of restoring or maintaining an individual's health and improving outcomes while combining resources" (Bridges et al., 2011). Nowadays the expectation needs to be that clinicians will get this type of training so that they can better serve the field and ensure safer outcomes for their patients.
Six Aims Promoted by the Institute of Medicine for Improving Healthcare
The six aims encouraged and expected by the Institute of Medicine for Improving Healthcare are truly balanced and strategic means for ensuring that healthcare can be bettered in a systematic way so that both patients and clinicians feel palpable benefits. One of these ideas is the deployment of rapid response teams at the first sight of patient decline. This is a truly smart move as it can significantly reduce patient mortalities. Rapid response teams are composed of healthcare professional with expertise and experience in critical care that understand how to respond to client at the first indication of clinical deterioration. "This team is meant to stabilize a patient's condition before a cardiac or respiratory arrest, or other adverse event occurs. The RRT has several models, ranging from an ICU MD/RN team to an ICU RN/Respiratory Therapist team. The physician may be a senior resident, fellow, or staff physician" (nichq.org). It truly is a beneficial means of preventing avoidable patient mortalities.
Another of these six aims is to gather reliable evidence-based care for acute myocardial infarctions. This is the only way such conditions can be adequately treated, via proven interventions for the consistent use of things like aspirin, beta blocker medications on admission and at discharge, as well as "ACEi/ARB medications for patients with reduced ejection fraction, timely access to reperfusion (clot buster medication or angioplasty), and smoking cessation counseling" (Baystatehealth.com). Preventing adverse drug events is also one of the six aims promoted by the institute of medicine for improving health. "Over 770,000 people are injured or die each year in hospitals from adverse drug events (ADEs),1-3 which may cost up to $5.6 million each year per hospital4,5 depending on hospital size. This estimate does not include ADEs causing admissions, malpractice and litigation costs, or the costs of injuries to patients" (ahrq.com). This quote best summarizes the tremendous cost, in patient lives, health and trust that occur to the health care arena when a drug is adversely prescribed, and how it costs the health care arena significant sums that could be significantly better spent elsewhere.
On a similar note, preventing things like surgical site infections and ventilator associate pneumonia are some of the most preventable infections that occur in hospitals. Clinicians need to be more responsible in staying up-to-date with the most pertinent research conducted recently on these issues and follow the most promising forms of evidence-based practices. In particular, at my organization, surgical site infections are a specific problem that costs our facility money each year, lengthens patient stays and which undermines patient confidence in the level of care that they're receiving. Fundamentally, patients feel like they're just not receiving a high level of care when they get an infection post surgery; it bolsters their level of anxiety, something which can retard the healing process.
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