Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example
Organizational Memo on the influence of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) To Err Is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm reports in an organization
The Institute of Medicine’s publication “To Err Is Human” encapsulated its recommendation that human medical errors can be avoided by identifying and designing processes that make it difficult for medical personnel to commit error and easy for them to make right clinical judgements (Donaldson et al., 2000). Equally, the corresponding report, i.e., Crossing the Quality Chasm (Baker, 2001), summarised its purpose of highlighting the lack of consistency and high-quality based on scientific knowledge to meet patient’s needs. In sum, these reports highlight the frequent harm that healthcare cause patients and the frequent failure to deliver its potential benefits. This memo highlights and discussess the influence of these reports on Mt. Sinai Hospital and its patient safety and security events and mitigating frameworks.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
The influence of IOM reports’ objectives and impacts on the goals, mission, and values of Mt. Sinai Hospital
Mission and Goal
Mt. Sinai hospital’s mission of providing compassionate care delivery through seamless collaboration and advancing medicine in the many diverse communities it serves through unparalleled training, research, and outreach (Mount Sinai Health System, n.d.). Donaldson et al. (2000), for example, describe layout actions that the internal and external players in the healthcare industry may take to improve the delivery system’s commitment to patient safety concerns. The reports also influence the hospital’s goals of consistent growth and challenge to the existing convention, consistent scientific advancements, competent leadership, and a cooperative approach in patient care delivery (Mount Sinai Health System, n.d.).(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Furthermore, the study also outlines a series of steps that the healthcare delivery system should take to promote patient safety (Donaldson et al., 2000). These recommendations include establishing a national emphasis on patient safety, making more knowledge accessible, establishing patient safety standards, and defining how healthcare organizations can implement safety programs. Therefore, healthcare providers must(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Values: Creativity, Agility, Teamwork and Empathy
Correspondingly, the follow-up report by Baker et al. (2001) focused at how the health system can be reinvented to promote creativity and enhance care delivery. In the report, health-care stakeholders, including health providers, government officials, partners and users of healthcare services and products must collaborate on healthcare in achieving universal care needs (Baker, 2001). These reports influence the goals and values that the Mount Sinai Hospital has set in place to achieve its aim of providing compassionate care.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Mt. Sinai hospital’s other values include safety, agility, teamwork, and empathy. Therefore, the reports support the hospital’s initiative to establish patient safety and security through the identification and development of forward-thinking approaches to challenge patient security and safety. Similarly, the value for creativity through the identification and development of forward-thinking policies questions contemporary patient safety, and the reports support security issues.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Moreover, the reports support Mt. Sinai hospital’s value for agility, i.e., its ability to be flexible and quick to adapt to changes; teamwork, i.e., the need to work together in diverse teams to achieve superior outcomes; empathy, i.e., the need to demonstrate a deeper understanding on patients and their families through compassion, inclusion, respect, and care.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Adverse safety event that led to systems changes related to patient safety at Mt. Sinai Hospitals
Heart Attack and Prolonged Admission Time
Despite its reputation and image as one of the best healthcare provider in the USA, Mt. Sinai Hospitals have once been exposed to staffing shortages despite the high patient volumes leading to serious patient safety issues in its emergency department, which has once been termed a war zone (Bean, 2019). Staffing shortages at Mt Sinai Hospital have led to the facility’s inability to control infection and maintain patient safety, which is its core value. The New York Post’s revealed that former physicians and nurses at the hospital’s emergency department pointed out lapses in care to an extent some patients could have a heart attack without clinicians noticing or were not admitted to critical care due to lack of space.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
It was believed that the hospital’s switch to split flow ED operations in 2016 could have contributed to the adverse events that as aimed at expediting care and lowering wait times but instead created a dangerous workload of patients due to staffing and bed shortage (Bowden, 2019). These concerns drove the hospital’s leadership to add additional nurses, a nurse manager, assistant nurse managers, and other additional 130 employees in the ED. The hospital moved to renovate the ED, observation unit, and double the number of treatment locations.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
In its statement, the hospital administration reiterated its commitment to the pursuit of excellence through a strategic review in 2016. Following the review, the hospital’s mission has achieved higher survival rates among patients admitted with chronic diseases (Mount Sinai Health System, 2019). Besides, the hospital’s management opened an express care facility to alleviate crowding at its emergency department. Further, the hospital is committed to serving a diverse community facilitating their safety, care, and accessibility to the health services.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Effect of the adverse event on operational procedures at Mt. Sinai Hospital.
Heart attack events and lack of quick admission into critical care have been attributed to short staffing at Mt. Sinai Hospital. Obstacles to high-quality care, according to Babaei & Taleghani (2019), include a shortage of nursing personnel and a lack of time to care. Nursing, in this sense, is a crucial factor in assessing a hospital’s care quality and the nature of patient outcomes. On an abstract level, there is widespread agreement that nurses are critical to the health-care delivery system and that nurse staffing has an effect on patient safety. As a result, paying attention to the wishes and demands of nurses would lead to nurses becoming mindful of all of the patients’ needs.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Furthermore, staffing ratios influenced infection control, patient safety, patient boarding, and the ED conditions, which went against a first-class medical center (Bowden, 2019). The management system could inevitably cause more incidents related to patient safety. However, the management’s extraordinary efforts to salvage the situation led to an increase in staff number. The system in place, i.e., the split flow ED operations, could achieve its potential. With this system, every patient seeking medication goes straight to ER room regardless of their condition. Therefore, patients can wait to see a doctor in approximately 30 minutes, which initially overloaded employees given previous staffing levels and lack of beds.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Patient safety goals, mission, purpose, and values at Mt. Sinai Hospitals
Patient safety is a critical pillar at Mt. Sinai Hospital. The hospital goals directly touching on patient safety include the hospital’s pursuit for scientific advancement and collaborative approach in providing exceptional patient careThe Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) study “To Err is Human” recommended that new technologies be developed and tested to minimize medical errors. The subsequent study, “crossing the quality chasm,” released in 2001, argued that the use of information technology is a critical step in reforming and changing the healthcare system so that more, leading to safer care.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Mt. Sinai places a high value on innovation as a means of advancing medical science. Clinical decision support, for example, offers guidance and patient-specific information to health care professionals. This information is filtered and conveyed to the clinical personnel at the right times in order to help them make better decisions (Alotaibi & Federico, 2017). As a result, health information technology aims to increase patient safety by reducing medication mistakes, adverse drug reactions, and adherence to practice guidelines.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Medical errors may occur when there is a lack of communication. Such error can cause widespread problem in today’s health-care settings (O’Daniel & Rosenstein, 2008). Collaboration is also important because it allows professionals to play complementary roles and work together cooperatively to solve problems, make decisions, and devise and carry out patient care plans (O’Daniel & Rosenstein, 2008). Furthermore, effective communication enhances nurse’s agility, which Mt. Sinai Hospital’s core operating value, due to efficient coordination of workplace activities.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
The operating value of Mt. Sinai Hospitals is teamwork. Therefore, Mt. Sinai’s collaborative approach to patient care is crucial to patient security and safety. Therefore, the hospital’s mission of providing compassionate care by advancing medicine through education, research, and outreach with the community it serves is significant to achieving patient safety and security. According to Babaei & Taleghani (2019), compassion is a characteristic of quality care and a substantial patient-centered nursing component. Carayon & Gurses (2008) argue that short staffing can reduce inpatient length of stay. Compassion is a significant Mt. Sinai operating value. Compassion leads to safer care as nurses are more concerned with the patient’s wellbeing, thus helping patients get faster recovery, manage their pain, and shorter hospital stays.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Clinical/medical risks and medical staff as second victims
Patient falls, cardiac arrest and prolonged recovery time
The medical errors associated with short staffing include patient falls, cardiac arrests, and prolonged recovery time. Nurses who are overworked can experience exhaustion or burnout, impairing their ability to concentrate on tasks (Garrett, 2008). When you have too few nurses and too many patients, the staff will be overworked, and you’ll find a rise in falls, a higher risk of infection, and nurse errors. Injury and even death are real consequences of understaffing (Staggs & Dunton, 2014). Medical mistakes, a lack of engagement, and missing nursing care may all result from this lack of focus. Lack of engagement can lead to patients being taken care of differently and an increased fall for those who need help moving around or bed adjustment.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Negative emotional and psychological health
When a clinical setting is understaffed, the workload is spread to a few caregivers who are expected to work longer hours (Carayon & Gurses, 2008). As a result, nurse’s psychosocial, and emotional health is affected. In this circumstance, nurses are unable to function, further contributing to staffing shortage. This is because, nurses are constantly under stress, thus, develops anxiety and depression, as well as other stress related illnesses.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Strategies to mitigate medical errors
Training Nurses
Medical professionals often encounter feelings of self-doubt, humiliation, frustration, inadequacy, and anxiety as a result of medical errors (White & Gallagher, 2011). Hospital facilities should participate in medical error prevention, and healthcare organizations should concentrate on retaining nurses by providing a supportive workplace culture. Healthcare organizations should create flexible working schedules to avoid fatigue among employees.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Effective medical systems
Mt. Sinai Hospital management support caregivers by introducing the split flow ED operation in which reporting patients are classified depending on the complexity of their condition, understanding, and stability. Secondly, the hospital should increase technical support and additional resources, e.g., advanced health systems and increased operation units to help manage patients. The inclusion of nurses is crucial since they provide care and safeguard the wellbeing of patients.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
Evaluate the statement “those who make errors that harm patients are themselves victims.”
Medical errors affect caregivers just as it affects patients and their families. Even when clinically expected, health care providers are repeatedly subjected to the emotional distress caused by death resulting from medical errors (Grissinger, 2014). Known as the second victims, caregivers are often exposed to clinical situations causing experience psychological trauma every time they cause adverse event while providing care (Grissinger, 2014). Despite the improved reporting and transparency of medical errors, second victims are not supported in their greatest time of need. The impact of the mistakes is felt in their private, social, and professional. Grissinger (2014) argues that the second victims suffer from illnesses that require immediate attention such as hypertension, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) etc., thus poor health status.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
The influence of the IOM report’s objectives and impacts on the goals, mission, and values of Mt. Sina Hospital
The objective and the impacts of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) report “To err is human” and “crossing the quality chiasm” continue to have a significant influence in the healthcare sector. The two reports argued for the use and advancement in technology to mitigate against medical errors and secure patient safety and security in health care settings. Rodziewics et al. (2021) argue that there is a need for advancement in medical practice to limit medical errors, particularly in minimizing errors resulting from medical interventions and negligence. The need for advancement in technology is a crucial goal of Mt. Sinai Hospitals. Equally, the need for creativity is an essential value for the Mt. Sinai Hospitals. The reports are crucial in guiding the hospital to provide unraveled care through scientific advancement. For instance, the use of information technology such as electronic health records is essential in reducing the patient backlog and increasing admission rates to patients and the Mt. Sinai Hospitals.(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
According to Rodziewicz, T. L., & Hipskind (2018), medical errors due to omitted clinical actions or wrong actions taken. Bypassing or taking improper clinical action are partly caused by increase increased workload and staff fatigue. These patient harms occurring during healthcare increases morbidity and mortality. The two reports also argue for adequate staffing as a critical facet of patient care. In response to the complaints on nursing staff crisis, late admission, and patients’ deaths, Mt. Sinai Hospital increased nursing staff, expanded clinical units, and supported the use of split flow ED associated with favorable patient outcome. Therefore, healthcare organizations’ safety systems seek to prevent harm to patients, their families, and friends (Bennnan et al., 1991).(Medical Safety Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)
References
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