According to the World Health Organization (2014), one of the most important public health issue globally is patient safety. Surveys have shown that approximately one out of ten patients are harmed while receiving hospital care and treatment in developed countries. On the other hand, heath care infections are more common in developing countries than developed countries with seven in 100 for the former and ten in 100 for the latter. The increasing number of individuals affected by hospital related infections and harms led to the recognition for the need to improve patient safety.
Some of the concerns when it comes to patient safety includes poor coordination when it comes to the transition of the next level of care of patients, reporting of errors of test results, shortages of drug medications, mislabeled specimens, and inadequate processing of the instruments used for surgeries and endoscopies. However, the top patient safety concern according to the list released by ECRI Institute is health information technology related safety hazards. This finding can be due to the complexity of the health IT systems used in health care institutions. There can be many sources of errors when dealing with these systems. Some of these include errors when it comes to entry of data, data delivery, missing data, using of default values inappropriately, reusing of old information from previous reports into a new report, and many more (Terry, 2014).
One of the stakeholders that can greatly contribute to the improvement of patient safety outcomes are doctors of nursing practice or DNPs. Nurses who were able to acquire doctoral programs are educated and trained to be proficient when it comes to the implementation of information acquired from different studies or researches. DNP nurses are equipped to do practice evidence-based practice where current and updated research findings and evidences are used to help in decision making when it comes to patient safety and health care delivery (Moore, 2014).
As a DNP nurse, they are various ways to help improve patient safety by focusing on quality improvement. Since the top concern when it comes to patient safety is the use of health IT systems, the best way to lessen errors and improve the quality of health care delivery is to initiate the provision of adequate training and education to personnel especially when handling health IT systems. Aside from this, since DNP nurses are skilled in evidence-based practice, it will be beneficial if I use my skills in applying research findings in my practice. I will gather information from other studies about the use of health IT systems and implement changes that can be helpful in the organization’s ability to adapt to the dynamics of technology in the health care sector. I will also collaborate with other professionals especially other stakeholders that are directly involved with handling health IT systems. I will also ask help from technology experts to provide training to the stakeholders to help lessen errors that can be prevented when the personnel handling the encoding and processing are adequately trained. Additionally, it is important to be hands-on when it comes to monitoring and reporting of the progress when it comes to improving patient safety concerns. One of the needed information to determine the progress of patient safety improvement includes the number of errors that are related to health IT systems. It is also necessary to make sure that all of the personnel are abiding to the state laws when it comes to the health care improvement priorities.
References
Moore, K. (2014). How DNP and PhD nurses can collaborate to maximize patient care. American Nurse Today. Retrieved from http://www.americannursetoday.com/assets/0/434/436/440/11072/11074/11088/11136/f32dd150-55d8-47d7-9906-4631bcfd927b.pdf [Accessed in 27 Jan 2016].
Terry, K. (2014). Health IT Biggest Threat to Patient Safety, Report Says. Medscape News & Perspective. Retrieved from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/824109 [Accessed on 27 Jan 2016].
World Health Organization. (2014). 10 facts on patient safety. World Health Organization. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/patient_safety/en/ [Accessed on 27 Jan 2016].
