‘Culture of safety’ at Kendall Regional Medical Center
While analyzing the efficiency of Kendall Regional Medical Center based on how well it has accomplished a ‘culture of safety’ that focuses on addressing systemic/process rather than individual errors, it seems that the organization deserves B grade. It is identified that recently the organization has taken a number of initiatives to improve its process efficiency. The major ongoing initiatives include preventing blood clots in patient’s legs following a surgery, achieving time-oriented emergency care, enhancing care competencies through staff training programs. These initiatives would assist Kendall Regional Medical Center to establish a culture of safety in the organization and thereby improve its overall process efficiency. Instead of adopting a manual paper process, this health organization now deploys Medication Administration Record (MAR) to document medication that is administered on a patient. In order to record the medication information electronically, the organization has developed an electronic version of the MAR known as eMAR (eMar and Bar Coding).In addition, all the processes of the organization are directed at enhancing the approach of ‘putting patients first’, which in turn can promote patient safety to a considerable extent. The health institution has also implemented a system for evaluating its operational efficiency by third-party quality monitoring organizations.All these initiatives that are adding to a ‘culture of safety’ make the organization entitle to receive a B grade.
Operational approach of Kendall Regional Medical Center
The organization does not have a comprehensive program for handling sentinel events, and hence, it often fails to take proactive measures to curb the spreading of infectious and epidemic diseases. In an attempt to ensure provider competencies, the Kendall Regional Medical Center has implemented a number of initiatives that are capable of enhancing the service quality of the organization. For this, the organization makes sure that human efforts are properly supported by technological advancements. To illustrate, this health institution uses eMAR technology to electronically document medication that is administered on patients. One of the major benefits of this technology is that it makes patient care information readily available to health providers so that they can be aware of patient’s allergic reactions before administering a drug. It appears that the organization pays particular focus to incorporating new technology into its systems and processes with the objective of enhancing the quality of care and promoting patient safety. In addition, the Kendall Regional Medical Center is investing notably in modern technology for reducing the worksite stress of nurse staff, who play a pivotal role in enhancing care delivery (CEO Message). Finally, the organization keeps a sensible mechanism for fostering employees to report punitive/non-punitive errors and thereby improving the overall quality of care and patient safety on a constant-basis.
Management of interdisciplinary conflict and medical errors
The Kendall Regional Medical Center management is really concerned about how dreadfully interdisciplinary conflict/communication problems may affect the organization’s patient outcomes. As a result, the organization’s administrative team has taken comprehensive measures to address the issue of communication problems in the worksite environment. To justify, improving staff communication is one of the National Patient Safety Goals of the organization (Patient Safety Goals).The organizational management believes that improved staff communication is a better way to avoid misunderstandings and to reduce the chances of interdisciplinary conflicts to a great extent. In addition, the organization relies extensively on technological advancements to reduce the incidence of medication errors. It is identified that advanced technologies such as eMAR and Bar Coding can really assist the organization to decrease the incidence of medication errors to a considerable extent. In addition, the management encourages the staff to report medication errors so as to prevent the probability of such unwanted medical outcomes in future.
References
CEO Message. (n.d.). Kendall Regional Medical Center. Retrieved from http://kendallmed.com/about/ceo-message.dot
eMar and Bar Coding. (n.d.). Kendall Regional Medical Center. Retrieved from http://kendallmed.com/about/quality/emar-and-bar-coding.dot
Patient Safety Goals. (n.d.). Kendall Regional Medical Center. Retrieved from http://kendallmed.com/about/quality/patient-safety-goals.dot#
