Introduction
Patient's safety is paramount for any health facility. As such, a health facility must put in place mechanisms aimed at reducing chances of putting the patient’s safety in any danger. Hence, a health facility must employ risk management practices to make sure in case of an incident, it is handled in a professional manner. Additionally, the legal process must take its effects to make sure the patient, staff or the organization is reimbursed. Moreover, risk management is a collective responsibility of all the health practitioners at the health facility. Thus, the quality assurance department should work with all the departments and staffs to make sure the chances of risk occurring are minimized if not eliminated (Nieva et al., 2003)
I am working in Children's National Medical Center and had the privilege of meeting the risk management officer (quality assurance department) to discuss the process that is followed in case an incident. We also discuss the legal aspects which are involved and how the facility assures the quality of its services is not compromised.
The process
Thus, according to the risk management officer, the process starts by the health practitioners notifying their supervisors about the incident. The notification will be followed by a report of the incident. The report of the practitioner will be handed over to the risk management/ quality assurance department for investigations, repair and maintenance to take place. The findings of the investigations will be handed over to the legal department for the legal matter to be addressed. The legal department will check the liability aspect of the incident. The process is as explained below in detail.
At the beginning of the discussion, the supervisor emphasized that, the patient’s safety comes first. Therefore, the health practitioner attending a patient must make sure the patient is safe. In the case of an incident, the practitioner must take into consideration all the necessary measures to ensure the patient is saved from any harm. However, if the incidence cannot be handled by one person, the staff should alert the rest of the staffs.
After ensuring all the patients are safe, and the incident is contained, the health practitioner will notify the immediate supervisor of the department where incident occurred. The health practitioner must write a report immediately to recount the events prior to the incident that had put the patient’s life at risk. (Hughes, 2008).
The supervisor of the department will deliver the report of the incident within three hours to the quality assurance department(risk management) for an immediate investigation. Essentially, the immediate investigation is aimed finding the real cause of the incident and to avoid similar incidence from happening in future (Leonard at el., 2010). Furthermore, the investigation is aimed at improving the service delivery to the customers by making their safety is assured.
When the investigations are over, and the cause is known, the process of restoration of quality and safety begins. The department will write its report on the investigations detailing its finding and hand over the report to the legal and ethics department to deal with the liability matters. On the other hand, the quality assurance department will act on the investigation by correcting the defaults that contributed to the incident (Vincent et al., 2000)
Liability process
The legal and ethical department will examine the liability aspect of the incident. If the patient or staff was harm due to the incident, the department makes sure the patient/staff is reimbursed. The department will notify the insurance company about the incident. This is aimed at making sure the organization is compensated by the insurance company on the loss it suffered due to the incident (Kraman, 2009).
The relationship between the legal and assurance department
The relationship between the legal and assurance department is of mutual respect since they work together to make sure the patients at all times are in safe hands. Particularly, the two departments work in hand in assessing the employees’ reports in case of accidents and assuring patients their safety. On the other, hand the legal department has put in place the guidelines on how the investigations should take place. This is to ensure the rights of the patients, and the staffs are not infringed (Singer et al., 2009).
Conclusively, risk management is a significant part of any organization. This is because it creates an environment that is secured to the patient and the staff in general. Additionally, in case of an incident it makes sure the incident is handled with care and chances of any danger are minimized.
Reference
Hughes, R. G., Wolf, Z. R., & Hughes, R. G. (2008). Error Reporting and Disclosure.
Kraman, S. S., & Hamm, G. (2009). Risk management: extreme honesty may be the best policy. Annals of Internal Medicine, 131(12), 963-967.
Leonard, M. S. (2010). Patient safety and quality improvement: medical errors and adverse events. Pediatrics in Review, 31(4), 151-158.
Nieva, V. F., & Sorra, J. (2003). Safety culture assessment: a tool for improving patient safety in healthcare organizations. Quality and Safety in Health Care,12(suppl 2), ii17-ii23.
Singer, S., Lin, S., Falwell, A., Gaba, D., & Baker, L. (2009). Relationship of safety climate and safety performance in hospitals. Health services research,44(2p1), 399-421.
Vincent, C., Taylor-Adams, S., Chapman, E. J., Hewett, D., Prior, S., Strange, P., & Tizzard, A. (2000). How to investigate and analyse clinical incidents: clinical risk unit and association of litigation and risk management protocol.Bmj, 320(7237), 777-781.
Wolff, A. M., Bourke, J., Campbell, I. A., & Leembruggen, D. W. (2001). Detecting and reducing hospital adverse events: outcomes of the Wimmera clinical risk management program. The Medical journal of Australia, 174(12), 621-625.
