In recent decades most of the international effort given over to studying and improving the safety of patient care has been focused in acute hospital settings. To some extent this was always something of a puzzle to those of us with a direct interest in this important issue...Now, however, the tide is slowly turning. Policymakers, healthcare leader
'In recent decades most of the international effort given over to studying and improving the safety of patient care has been focused in acute hospital settings. To some extent this was always something of a puzzle to those of us with a direct interest in this important issue...Now, however, the tide is slowly turning. Policymakers, healthcare leaders and research grant funders are beginning to recognise that greater evidence is required to understand more about what can and does go wrong in primary care, with increasing attention now being paid to what can be done to minimise avoidable harm to patients in this setting.' From the Preface This remarkable new book represents a substantial body of work - led by key educators and researchers - devoted to learning about and improving the safety of primary healthcare. It offers highly practical guidance and evidence for a broad range of related improvement methods, concepts and interventions developed and implemented by the NES primary care team, or as a direct result of fruitful partnerships between academic, professional, public or regulatory institutions across the UK and internationally. Skillfully presented, the book is organised into five interlinked parts, each with a number of related chapters. Safety and Improvement in Primary Care: The Essential Guide is ideal for frontline clinicians, managers and healthcare administrators needing practical guidance on safety and is also highly recommended for improvement advisers, patient safety officers, clinical governance facilitators, risk managers, and health services researchers wanting a critical review of theory and evidence.
Patient Safety and Healthcare Improvement at a Glance isa timely and thorough overview of healthcare quality writtenspecifically for students and junior doctors and healthcareprofessionals. It bridges the gap between the practical and thetheoretical to ensure the safety and wellbeing of patients.Featuring essential step-by-step guides to interpreting andmanaging risk, quality improvement within clinical specialties, andpractice development, this highly visual textbook offers the bestpreparation for the increased emphasis on patient safety andquality-driven focus in today’s healthcare environment. Healthcare Improvement and Safety at a Glance: • Maps out and follows the World Health OrganizationPatient Safety curriculum • Draws upon the quality improvement work of theInstitute for Healthcare Improvement This practical guide, covering a vital topic of increasingimportance in healthcare, provides the first genuine introductionto patient safety and quality improvement grounded in clinicalpractice.
This text uses a case-based approach to share knowledge and techniques on how to operationalize much of the theoretical underpinnings of hospital quality and safety. Written and edited by leaders in healthcare, education, and engineering, these 22 chapters provide insights as to where the field of improvement and safety science is with regards to the views and aspirations of healthcare advocates and patients. Each chapter also includes vignettes to further solidify the theoretical underpinnings and drive home learning. End of chapter commentary by the editors highlight important concepts and connections between various chapters in the text. Patient Safety and Quality Improvement in Healthcare: A Case-Based Approach presents a novel approach towards hospital safety and quality with the goal to help healthcare providers reach zero harm within their organizations.
"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.
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.
Building on the revolutionary Institute of Medicine reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Keeping Patients Safe lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses' working conditions and demands. Licensed nurses and unlicensed nursing assistants are critical participants in our national effort to protect patients from health care errors. The nature of the activities nurses typically perform â€" monitoring patients, educating home caretakers, performing treatments, and rescuing patients who are in crisis â€" provides an indispensable resource in detecting and remedying error-producing defects in the U.S. health care system. During the past two decades, substantial changes have been made in the organization and delivery of health care â€" and consequently in the job description and work environment of nurses. As patients are increasingly cared for as outpatients, nurses in hospitals and nursing homes deal with greater severity of illness. Problems in management practices, employee deployment, work and workspace design, and the basic safety culture of health care organizations place patients at further risk. This newest edition in the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Quality Chasm series discusses the key aspects of the work environment for nurses and reviews the potential improvements in working conditions that are likely to have an impact on patient safety.
Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.
