Safety and quality improvement

Safety and Quality Improvement
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Safety and Quality Improvement
Health facilities all around the world struggle each day to get the sick back on their feet. Often at times the process of caring for the ill results in more disastrous situations than when the patient visited the health facility; mostly due to medication errors (Errors, 2016). Unsafe healthcare, if at all medication errors can be called so, has proved challenging globally resulting in studies getting conducted to understand the causes, consequences, and solutions. Medication errors may happen in a hospital setting or at home (Almoajel, 2017). When medication errors occur in the hospital, some of the contributing reasons are; caregiver recklessness, mixing medications for different patients, changing of caregivers among many other reasons (Errors, 2016).
Some caregivers are careless, and they may not take their time to peruse the records of a patient before administering medication. For example, some malaria patients are allergic to penicillin whereas it is the practice of medical practitioners to offers penicillin and quinine as a dose for malaria. In the event an allergic patient gets administered with a combination of penicillin and quinine, the result may be death. In the cause of dispensing medication on patients, a caregiver may mix up different patient’s medication thus resulting in the administration of the right meds on the wrong patients (Errors, 2016). Nurses work in shifts, at times some break without even filling a patient’s history in the books thus leaving a window for opinions for the next nurse on duty.

Nurses give care with the knowledge of patient’s in mind.
Estimation of medication errors is not an easy task as there are different definitions of what makes up a medication error. Medication error percentages vary globally, for example, in the United Kingdom research shows that twelve percent of primary care patients bear the brunt of medication errors resulting from prescription and monitoring. While in another part of the world in Sweden, a medication error of forty-two percent got recorded. In Sweden, the errors resulted from misinformation on why treatment was necessary. In general, it is impossible to assign a number to medication errors in the world (Errors, 2016).
A continuous quality improvement would require the incorporation of medication review, automation of hospital information system, and constant education for patients and caregivers. Reduction of medication errors requires a case by case approach as the factors leading to medication errors in one part of the continent are not the same in the other part of the world (Errors, 2016). However, some interventions can help improve patients’ safety and reduce medication errors.
Medication reviews and reconciliation tend to improve caregiving outcomes and consequently reduce medication errors. Proper medication reviews should get conducted by a pharmacist or any other clinician. Medication reviews help in the establishment of a consistent and authoritative reference across transitions in healthcare. Medication changes, deletions, and additions need to undergo an evaluation to establish their worth (Almoajel, 2017).
Automation of hospital information systems and other interventions in the cause of healthcare delivery helps reduce medication errors. Use of computerized provider order entry (CPOE) decreases the frequency of medication errors (Errors, 2016).
Some of the medication errors outlined above are as a result of ignorance. A nurse may be well learned, but some things just escape their grasp, for that reason, continuous education goes a long way in improving safety and quality of caregiving (Almoajel, 2017). Education gets cited as a multicomponent that should exist if medication errors are to get handled satisfyingly. Some medications are given to patients so that they can administer to themselves at home. In ensuring the safety of the house administered medication, continuous education is necessary. Apart from the above interventions aimed at safety and quality improvement, a multicomponent of the responses may also help (Makary & Daniel, 2016).
Safe healthcare provision is the desire of every nation for her people. For governments to achieve universal health coverage, provision of reliable and high-quality care is necessary. Medication errors are a serious threat to the achievement of comprehensive health coverage. Today, there is a growth in the volume of medication use; with that, there is a projected increase in medication errors (Almoajel, 2017).
Medication errors directly impact the lives of humans for they are the subjects; it is the responsibility of humans to pursue better lives each day. Hospitals should not be the deathbeds of the sick, they should not scare the sick, and they should inspire the sick always to seek medication. However, the occurrence of severe medication errors is relatively lower; remedy should be out of the question among areas that errors occur (Makary & Daniel, 2016).
Provision of care at the primary level determines the number of resources that can go into treating a patient. Unsafe healthcare delivery at the fundamental level may increase mortality and morbidity of patients. Hazardous healthcare provision at the entry-level strains the available resources when countering the effects of the medication error (Almoajel, 2017). Sustainable healthcare demands that caregiving at the primary level be error free. Many nations are the members of the United Nations, under which there is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals where healthy living gets promoted (Makary & Daniel, 2016).

References
Almoajel, A. (2017). Medical Errors from Healthcare Professional’s Perspective at a Tertiary Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. La Prensa Medica, 2016.
Errors, M. (2016). Technical series on safer primary care. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Makary, M. A., & Daniel, M. (2016). Medical error-the third leading cause of death in the US. BMJ: British Medical Journal (Online), 353.