Brief Information On National Patient Safety Goals
The aim of National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG) is to motivate the health care organization to bring an improvement in patient safety issues and their related activities. These components are re-evaluated every year in order to further improve health care. At the end of the year the goals are assessed by the Joint Commission and then some changes are made in them which come into effect on the first day of the New Year. At the time of creating new goals for coming year some of the goals that were formed in the previous year are dropped and substituted with the new ones that of more concern. This approach helps in being flexible while finding effective solutions for the rising issues in patient safety.
The Joint Commission focuses on improving the safety and quality of patient care and asks the accredited and reputed health care organizations to report the patient safety and quality improvement goals that are most required for the best care of the patients. Some of the safety goals for the patients include bringing a reduction in medication errors, eliminating wrong site surgeries, reducing post operative complications among others.
To reduce these issues nurses play a very important role. As a matter of fact it comes under the responsibilities of nurses to identify, address and represent the needs of the patients with utmost care. The safety and health care provided to a patient by a health care organization is affected by the actions performed by the nurses. Therefore a nurse has to be aware of the patient safety issues in nursing so as to provide the best services. A nurse has to bear in mind that a person can not be stored to health by simply providing medical care if the approach used in nursing is not safe.
Some of the issues that need to be taken care of by nurses are keeping infections at bay by providing the highest quality of patient care, double checking drugs before giving to the patients, being aware of the right body part that needs to be operated upon. Some of the errors that are harmful for the safety of the patients can be avoided by taking precautionary measures. Drug and surgical errors are the most safety issues that lead to complications in the life case of the patients.
A drug error occurs when a doctor’s handwriting on a prescription is wrongly interpreted, or wrong dosage of medication is given to the patients. The time of giving the medication can also result in an error. Another reason for drugs error could be because of similar and confusing names of the drugs. It is the duty of those in the nursing field to make all the effort to avoid these mistakes as thousands of deaths every year occur for the very reason. A surgical error happens because of patient misidentification, wrong site surgeries or any other carelessness during the surgery. These safety violations can occur in any health care organization. Any organization, big or small, that engages in providing health care should make sure that they follow the revised NPSGs.
Most Related Articles:
2. Male nursing vs female nursing
3. How To Deal Female Patients By Male Nurse