Presents the results of a two-year study that analyzes how patient safety practices are being adopted by U.S. health care providers, examines hospital experiences with a patient safety culture survey, and assesses patient safety outcomes trends. In case studies of four U.S. communities, researchers collected information on the dynamics of local patient safety activities and on adoption of safe practices by hospitals.
"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/
This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.
Presents the results of a two-year study that analyzes how patient safety practices are being adopted by U.S. health care providers, examines hospital experiences with a patient safety culture survey, and assesses patient safety outcomes trends. In case studies of four U.S. communities, researchers collected information on the dynamics of local patient safety activities and on adoption of safe practices by hospitals.
This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.
How safe are hospitals? Why do some hospitals have higher rates of accident and errors involving patients? How can we accurately measure and assess staff attitudes towards safety? How can hospitals and other healthcare environments improve their safety culture and minimize harm to patients? These and other questions have been the focus of research within the area of Patient Safety Culture (PSC) in the last decade. More and more hospitals and healthcare managers are trying to understand the nature of the culture within their organisations and implement strategies for improving patient safety. The main purpose of this book is to provide researchers, healthcare managers and human factors practitioners with details of the latest developments within the theory and application of PSC within healthcare. It brings together contributions from the most prominent researchers and practitioners in the field of PSC and covers the background to work on safety culture (e.g. measuring safety culture in industries such as aviation and the nuclear industry), the dominant theories and concepts within PSC, examples of PSC tools, methods of assessment and their application, and details of the most prominent challenges for the future in the area. Patient Safety Culture: Theory, Methods and Application is essential reading for all of the professional groups involved in patient safety and healthcare quality improvement, filling an important gap in the current market.
Implementing safety practices in healthcare saves lives and improves the quality of care: it is therefore vital to apply good clinical practices, such as the WHO surgical checklist, to adopt the most appropriate measures for the prevention of assistance-related risks, and to identify the potential ones using tools such as reporting & learning systems. The culture of safety in the care environment and of human factors influencing it should be developed from the beginning of medical studies and in the first years of professional practice, in order to have the maximum impact on clinicians' and nurses' behavior. Medical errors tend to vary with the level of proficiency and experience, and this must be taken into account in adverse events prevention. Human factors assume a decisive importance in resilient organizations, and an understanding of risk control and containment is fundamental for all medical and surgical specialties. This open access book offers recommendations and examples of how to improve patient safety by changing practices, introducing organizational and technological innovations, and creating effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable care systems, in order to spread the quality and patient safety culture among the new generation of healthcare professionals, and is intended for residents and young professionals in different clinical specialties.
Americans should be able to count on receiving health care that is safe. To achieve this, a new health care delivery system is needed â€" a system that both prevents errors from occurring, and learns from them when they do occur. The development of such a system requires a commitment by all stakeholders to a culture of safety and to the development of improved information systems for the delivery of health care. This national health information infrastructure is needed to provide immediate access to complete patient information and decision-support tools for clinicians and their patients. In addition, this infrastructure must capture patient safety information as a by-product of care and use this information to design even safer delivery systems. Health data standards are both a critical and time-sensitive building block of the national health information infrastructure. Building on the Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Patient Safety puts forward a road map for the development and adoption of key health care data standards to support both information exchange and the reporting and analysis of patient safety data.