Intentional fatalities in health-care settings are among the most tragic incidents that may occur to a patient seeking medical help. Unintentional deaths in health care settings, particularly those caused by medical mistakes, have been on the rise in recent years. To lessen the causes of unintended fatalities, such mistakes must be avoided. The importance of federal programs and patient safety in reducing medical mistakes in health care institutions is critical. Patient safety is a distinct health-care field that focuses on patient safety while receiving health-care services. Patient safety, moreover, is founded on the prevention, mitigation, reporting, and analysis of different medical mistakes that might result in negative consequences, including patient mortality (Liu et al., 2018). The World Health Organization now considers patient safety to be an endemic problem. As a result, patient safety plays a critical role in protecting the interests of patients by preventing many causes that might have negative consequences for them (Khan et al., 2018). Patient safety is a field that focuses not only on the safety of patients in a health-care setting, but also on actions that may be taken to ensure patient safety with minimum effort on the part of health-care personnel. As a result, patient safety plays a critical role in supporting the interests of patients by preventing a variety of circumstances that might have a negative influence on them (Khan et al.,2018). Patient safety is a field that focuses not only on the safety of patients in a health-care setting, but also on actions that may be taken to ensure patient safety with minimum effort on the part of health-care personnel. As a result, patient safety is critical in reducing medical mistakes in a health-care institution and preventing unintended fatalities among health-care workers.
- The majority of health care errors occur in inpatient settings. Errors are becoming increasingly common in outpatient settings. Discuss at least two (2) reasons for the increasing errors in outpatient settings.
Medical mistakes have now risen to become the industry's third greatest cause of mortality, notably in the United States. Medical mistakes have exceeded other top causes of death, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and strokes. However, the major issue in the health-care business is the causation of medical mistakes in outpatient settings. Medical mistakes in outpatient settings have been linked to an insufficient flow of information. There is little doubt that information flow is crucial in a health-care context, especially when different service areas are involved (Bates & Singh, 2018). However, there are times when there is an inadequate flow of information, particularly when important information is required, resulting in fatalities. Information such as the transfer of patients to other health-care institutions, for example, might result in medical blunders. Medical mistakes induced by a lack of information flow are mostly caused by a lack of communication of patient findings and a negative impact on pharmaceutical prescriptions. Medical mistakes have always occurred in such situations, resulting in serious health implications for the patients. Human personnel issues may contribute to medical mistakes in outpatient health care settings. More precisely, there have been several occasions when people's carelessness has resulted in health care practitioners failing to guarantee that health care protocols, rules, procedures, and health care standards are followed appropriately in a health care environment. Poor labeling and record keeping can also describe the human issues in a health-care context (Royce et al., 2019). When health-care workers make mistakes owing to a lack of expertise, the consequences are frequently tragic.The health care providers must learn the importance of consulting with peers, appropriate application of expertise, and proper formulation of a health care plan. It is the role of a health care provider to consider the most evident disease diagnosis and practice of health care in such an automated sense to avoid medical errors in the health care settings, particularly in outpatient settings.
References:
Bates, D. W., & Singh, H. (2018). Two decades since to err is human: an assessment of progress and emerging priorities in patient safety. Health Affairs, 37(11), 1736-1743.
Liu, X., Zheng, J., Liu, K., Baggs, J. G., Liu, J., Wu, Y., & You, L. (2018). Hospital nursing organizational factors, nursing care left undone, and nurse burnout as predictors of patient safety: A structural equation modeling analysis. International journal of nursing studies, 86, 82-89.
Royce, C. S., Hayes, M. M., & Schwartzstein, R. M. (2019). Teaching critical thinking: a case for instruction in cognitive biases to reduce diagnostic errors and improve patient safety. Academic Medicine, 94(2), 187-194.