The safety of patients is critical to the provision of high-quality medical care. Safe care is efficient, intelligent, timely, people-centered, and effective. In some instances, however, patient safety issues can arise due to a variety of reasons.
Diagnostic Errors
These occur when a healthcare professional provides the wrong diagnosis leading them down the path of wrongful treatments and medications. A wrong diagnosis can also lead to a delay in treatment or recovery, especially in cases where the diagnosis calls for a surgical solution. Missed or delayed diagnoses can also lead to undue suffering, devastating outcomes, and patient fatalities.
Fortunately, many healthcare facilities now have facilitators who ensure every diagnosis is correct and timely. They monitor undue events, perform the analysis of these events, and put systems in place to prevent such errors from happening.
Discharge Errors
It is a balancing act between keeping a patient in a hospital and letting them go home. There are two main issues associated with discharges. One, the patient might not have recovered fully and thus could get worse over time once they get home. Second, many patients do not know how to care for themselves at home, with issues such as missed medication being common, especially in older patients.
Healthcare professionals must be careful about when to discharge a patient and ensure they can complete treatment and take care of themselves when they get home.
Defective Medical Devices
Healthcare professionals have a duty to ensure that all the devices they use on and in their patients are of a high-enough quality and have been tested thoroughly to ensure that they are safe in addition to being beneficial.
Defective medical devices, unfortunately, find their way into hospitals and patients’ bodies. They end up causing catastrophic injuries and even fatalities when they malfunction or fail, making them a serious patient safety concern.
Many medical malpractice lawsuits stem from the use of defective medical devices that have caused these consequences. It is critical to contact a lawyer to help you get the compensation you deserve due to wrongful death from defective medical devices. In addition to getting compensation, they will also help you hold the individuals, healthcare facilities, and manufacturers involved in the wrongful death responsible.
Medication Errors
Medication errors surround prescriptions and medication administration. Patients can receive the wrong medication, be given inaccurate dosages, or be given a combination of medications that interact with serious consequences or ones they are allergic to.
Many of these errors arise from human errors, including improper documentation, history taking and not paying attention to details.
Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
The misuse of antibiotics has led to strains of bacteria that are resistant to most or all common antibiotics. This issue can arise due to poor infection control and disease recurrence stemming from poor management. Many antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains are also very infectious, spreading rapidly in small communities. In addition to putting patients in danger, such bacteria can also lead to an increase in hospital-associated infections.
Patient safety is something that all healthcare providers should be thinking of at all times. However, there are instances where patient safety is at risk. It is, therefore, important for the healthcare industry to take actions to reduce or eliminate these risks.
