Patient Safety and Quality Management

Teams are likely to break down because they have not made the necessary efforts to ensure the standard prerequisites of patient safety are met at any given time. The first factor to enhance patient safety is useful nursing leadership. For leaders, the safety of their patients could be a critical issue and could cause them sleepless nights. The reason attributed to this is that senior management is responsible for creating and maintaining a safe environment for both patients and patient staff (Rosiek-Kryszewska, & Rosiek, 2018). Gallup research has discovered critical evidence that claims that employee safety and employee engagement work together to foster a safer environment for healthcare consumers. Such a situation limits the development of cooperation and prevents patients and staff from developing a working relationship that can enhance suitable patient safety results.

Nursing leadership can also work towards building a supportive culture where groups assist one another when they are engaged elsewhere, and supervisors do not force staff members to work faster at the likely expense of patient safety (Boamah, 2018). Alternatively, the leadership can cultivate the culture of honesty, where the staff is encouraged to provide feedback for direction on how to improve patient safety, including questioning decisions made in its name. The hospital setting should be an open place where members take personal responsibility for actions, mostly through consistent communication that starts with the top management. Also, leadership can progressively audit the transfer of knowledge about patients between shifts to ensure that vital information is not overlooked. The prevalent hazards to be on the watch for include bloodborne infections.

Accidental exposure or needless leading to contact with blood, can expose patients to the possibility of contracting HIV and other pathogenic conditions. The hospital management is required to educate patients about an Exposure Control Plan, and all patients should receive free training related to blood pathogens. In the case of exposure, the patient is entitled to a private follow-up evaluation besides an investigation of what took place and why (Hu, Luk, & Smith, 2015). The hospital also must ensure that any concerns raised about the storage, disposal, or transport of biological material that could cause potential risk to the patient and the staff members. The other likely issue is the difficulty in balancing home and work life. The OSHA cites the solutions as proper communication and adequate staffing.

Medical facilities reported 253,700 work-related illnesses and injuries in 2011, a scale of 7 diseases and injuries work for every 100 permanent laborers. Complicated incidences like this are the primary cause of employee dissatisfaction because one in three nurses below the age 30, and 2 in 10 always intend to resign at the turn of each year, according to research recently conducted by health professionals (Bell et al. The most reported concern is the issue of slips and falls, mostly caused by avoidable circumstances. The Center for Diseases Control and Prevention issues a detailed model profiling with the need for fall and slip avoidance by staff, in addition to prevention techniques. The concerned parties should be educated that the potential cause of slips and falls are wet floors, lousy lighting, and tripping hazards like tubes, hoses, and cords, and runners and floor mats that are unsuitably structured or used (Weerdt, & Baratta, 2015).

The OSHA advocacy for prevention here includes keeping floors dry and clean and notifying others for conditions that appear unsafe. Also, some patients have experienced cases of falling out of bed. Sometimes heavy medications could be the cause because it makes them feel sleepy, or illness, which hinders their stability. The last factor in patient safety is the concept of alarms in hospitals. Hospitals alarms inform caregivers of immediate or impending unpleasant patient situation. The bells must be intuitive, accurate, and raise warnings that are effortlessly interpreted or acted on by caregivers in a suitable way (Lukasewicz, & Mattox, 2015). Therefore, clinical alerts and their shortcomings have been a subject of discussion and numerous research in the recent past. Of most importance is the fact that the users can control the volume of the audible alarm noise or switch the alarms off and on.

It is also necessary to acknowledge that technology alone will not improve patient safety without incorporating human effort and commitment (Collier et al. The healthcare model must be devoted to initiating change by relying on evidence to improve safety. Dedication to improving safety must start with clinicians, physicians, and the hospital management. Specifically, Infection Prevention administration must be devoted to collaboratively creating a multidisciplinary unit of clinicians, safety experts, and quality analysts who will ensure patient safety standards are met. References Bell, J. Workplace health & safety, 61(4), 147-152. Boamah, S. Linking Nurses' Clinical Leadership to Patient Care Quality: The Role of Transformational Leadership and Workplace Empowerment. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 50(1), 9-19. Collier, S. W. , Sangeeta Agrawal, S. A. , & Kirti Kanitkar, K.