Picture yourself as a nurse in a busy contemporary hospital. Is the scene you imagine a quiet one? If so, you probably haven’t been in a hospital in a while. Quiet is the opposite of the status quo in most busy modern medical centers. Prominent among the noise sources is a cacophony of beeping and […]
National Safety Goals: Reducing Harm from Clinical Alarm Systems Read More »
“Do-the-2. Verify two patient identifiers — every patient, every time.” This pithy advice from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston is no silly call for extra typing. Medical errors have been considered as the third leading cause of death in the United States, and prominent among these are errors stemming from mistaken patient
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How to Reduce HAIs with Safety Goals Fueled by a recent study indicting medical errors as the third leading cause of death in the United States, renewed attention has been focused on preventing healthcare-associated harm to patients. Among the most common and preventable patient safety failures are healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). HAIs contribute to over
National Patient Safety Goals: Reducing Healthcare-Associated Infections Read More »
The Joint Commission’s annual National Patient Safety Goals articulate clear goals around which organizations can organize to increase their patient safety levels by highlighting specific areas for improvement and providing actions for achieving positive change. As seen in previous years, high on the 2019 list of patient safety goals is improving the effectiveness of communication
National Safety Goals: Improving Communication Among Caregivers Read More »
Well-executed purposeful nurse rounding – nurse-led patient checks performed consistently, using a standardized protocol – has been shown to significantly increase patient safety alongside patient and staff satisfaction. Yet despite evidence demonstrating its benefits, and validated protocols – like the Studer Group’s International Rounding Protocol – that provide clear instructions on how to perform these
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Before getting into specifics, put the issue of patient safety in perspective: What do you think would happen if 100,000 people died every year in airplane crashes? Doubtless, the aviation industry would descend into a critical state of emergency, devoting all available resources to address and maintain consumer safety. Yet, this is about how many
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Recent data indicates that close to 25,000 fatal falls and 3.2 million medically-treated injuries from non-fatal falls occurred in hospitals across the U.S. in 2012. These figures make one thing clear: falls are highly prevalent in hospitals. This is a serious concern because according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, falls are the
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Providing patients with sufficient attention and compassion can be just as crucial to their overall outcomes as the clinical treatment they receive in-hospital. This can be achieved through the practice of purposeful nurse rounding, i.e., when ward nurses carry out regular checks on their patients at set intervals, using a standardized protocol. Extensive research has
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From smart watches to video game consoles, many people are already benefiting from the internet of things (IoT) to make their daily lives easier. IoT is simply a network of computerized devices. Your smart phone, smart thermostat, Amazon Alexa and thousands of other devices are a part of IoT. IoT is becoming increasingly important for
How IoT is Improving Healthcare Read More »
Pathogens. Everywhere. While a few germs can actually be a good thing (bolstering immunity and whatnot), the overwhelming influx can become a problem in the workplace. Depending on the industry, this can become an even more prominent problem (for example, medical facilities). This begs the question — how can the spread of contagions be
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