Patient safety and quality improvement in healthcare delivery

Quality Safety

Current Issues in Quality and Safety

Patient safety is considered a priority in the health, increasingly complex activity that involves risk and in which there is no system capable of guaranteeing the absence of adverse events, as it is an activity in factors inherent in the system combined with human activities. According to the statistics, each year in the United States, Medical errors can kill up to 98,000 patients figure higher than deaths from traffic accidents, Canada and New Zealand, about 10% of a hospital patients suffer adverse effects from medical errors, while in Australia, this figure is approximately 16,6% (Miller & Coughlin, 2001). Direct consequences assistance is its economic impact: additional hospitalizations, patients and their families, along with the loss of income, disability, capabilities and medical costs represent a cost in some countries. This information has led the community to reflect about the absolute necessity of adopting effective measures, and pranks to reduce the growing number of adverse resources resulting from health care and its impact on life.

Discussion

Issue on health care delivery

The issue of quality has become a recurring issue in current health services within of achieving better results at lower cost and, above all, to the satisfaction of users and workers. Historically, the concept of quality of care has been in the services themselves, through measures of morbidity and mortality, type of education professionals, doctors and nurses, and even the calculation of health costs. However, this interest now is in a situation demonstrated not only by increasing the activity of health services, but also and very important for consumers of these services, users in general and the administration, which many countries is the primary funder, as well as being ultimately responsible for care to the citizens (Martin, 2001).

The unstoppable rise of healthcare costs means that there is a greater need to ensure that the significant amount of financial resources at present devoted to health care have appropriate effects, known and measured high levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

Quality improvement strategies

Safety is a basic principle of patient care and an important component of quality management. Its improvement requires a systemic effort complex and a wide range of measures to improve performance, ensure environmental safety and risk management, including the fight against infection, correct use of medicines, equipment safety, security clinical practice and safe environment in which care is given. In health care, suppose security concerns almost all disciplines and actors, and it therefore requires an approach on patients on all aspects in order to identify and manage risks and potential for patient safety in the various services and solutions for large long-term system in its together (Badham, Sinfield & Lancaster, 2006). Is addressing the problem of systemic point-of-view there seems to be the best chances of finding permanent solutions to reduce risks in giving due weight solutions aspects due to each component of patient safety, preferably in solutions related to aspects plus narrower and more specific issues that tend to underestimate the importance of other perspectives (Badham, Sinfield & Lancaster, 2006).

In the first case the results of quality of service or nursing unit could be measured by observing the number of activities in a given period standardized protocol, initiation, acceptance and monitoring by professionals. In the second, the quality assessment would be based on the quantification and reduction of the problems appeared that were related to the provision of care, whether adverse effects of care or any errors or omissions therein. As in other approaches such quality assessment is more developed in hospitals, probably influenced by the greater number of people involved in care and the complexity and cost associated with them. While less extension, the units of primary care nurses are increasingly using various media success of quality assurance relating to the outcome

User feedback is a specific result is particularly useful for assessing the quality of care and therefore must be quantified as a measure of that quality. It is understood this aspect of quality care if you consider that a broad concept of this would come to say that the quality is higher the larger the degree of acceptance and agreement with it by people who are the recipients is that patients or users of health services (Stark, Lennon & Shaw, 2002). Thus, modern studies on the quality of health care prominently include a range of measures of user satisfaction as a result of care provided at optimal levels. Such measures have, however, serious problems that differentiate this result for other observable and measurable parameters, namely the subjectivity is subjected to any measures that are ultimately based on the expression of personal opinion, expressed in full circumstances emotional factors as well as aspects of attachment and dependence on the health institution and professionals who have paid attention to the demand that the user is a value judgment.

For an evaluation of output that take as a measure patient satisfaction have real value, take care that the data are collected so as to enhance the objectivity of the views expressed and to avoid bias that might arise (Cork, 2005). To this end, a format often used anonymous questionnaire containing a closed survey, delivered to the patient, either during their period of care in the hospital or facility, or after a reasonable time after discharge produced, while not usually exceed a month, to ensure objectivity and weighting on the response and the ability to recall the fact that demand on public opinion.

In this case the survey was mailed, asking for its completion and return to the care center where she received the user. The questionnaire can be directed to assess the overall care provided by doctors, nurses and other professionals or focus more on some additional aspects or hotel: timeout and circumstances of the care, feeding, hygiene, communication, etc. In short, this particular approach to the assessment of the quality of results by the opinion and patient satisfaction of health services now form part of any system of quality assurance and control, allowing both appreciate the assistance from a global issue and make specific findings and specific issues (Miller & Coughlin, 2001).

Conclusion

To conclude, health experts tend to place the definition of quality of care in achieving a high scientific level - technical, i.e. The use of knowledge and technology which in principle ensures that professionals can provide an optimal service based on the application latest knowledge and advanced technology. Under this approach, the quality would be related primarily to what doctors and nurses know and the possibility that they and other professionals have to use appropriate means in their work. For their part, customers, patients or clients of health services identify quality rather with a component of many services available, from time employees, of the rapid care and other issues concerning the ease of use of services health, all aspects that deal specifically with the concept of efficiency of the system, geared to the amount of services that are available to people.