Initiatives for Patient Safety

Quite interesting pointers on raising awareness on this issue.

Patient safety in the wake of Covid-19 has garnered even more attention. In addition to the above WHO initiatives, I came across the "2023 National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs)" by the Joint commission.org. It provides guidelines for patient safety beyond the boundaries of the hospital room to settings such as home care, assisted living, nursing centers and even office spaces. This would be an informative read: //www.jointcommission.org/standards/national-patient-safety-goals/

I totally agree with Dr.Sofia.In the context of the re-emergence of covid 19 in different countries and the forecasted epidemic in our country, which is fallen under the category of LMICs, the topic of prevention of Nosocomial infection bears much importance. On this background, I came across a manual, forwarded by ICMR, that emphasizes on Infection Control Program.

Components of infection control program:
1. Basic measure for infection control – Standard and additional precaution
2. Education and training of healthcare workers
3. Protection of healthcare workers
4. Identification of hazards and minimizing risks
5. Aseptic techniques
6. Use of single-use devices, reprocessing of instruments and equipment
7. Antibiotic usage, management of blood/body fluid exposure, handling of blood/blood
products, and hospital waste management.
8. Surveillance
9. Outbreak investigation
10. Incident monitoring

Reference: //main.icmr.nic.in/sites/default/files/guidelines/Hospital_Infection_control_guidelines.pdf

//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3963198/

This CDC page talks about how to protect yourself from harmful germs and be a safe patient in the hospital. 

//www.cdc.gov/hai/patientsafety/patient-safety.html

In developed countries, as many as 1 in 10 patients is harmed while receiving hospital care. A range of errors or adverse events can cause harm. Of every 100 hospitalized patients at any given time, 7 in developed and 10 in developing countries will acquire Health Care-Associated Infections (HAIs). In recent years there has been increasing attention on improving healthcare quality in India within the broader Universal Health Coverage (UHC) context.

Reference: //main.mohfw.gov.in/sites/default/files/national%20patient%20safety%20implimentation_for%20web.pdf

Healthcare organizations priorities maintaining the highest levels of patient safety. Despite significant investments in improving safety, patients continue to suffer avoidable harm. The researchers in the aforementioned study attempt to (1) examine the extent, breadth, and nature of patient safety research activities; (2) make recommendations for future research; and (3) consider how these recommendations align with the Health Service Executive's (HSE) patient safety strategy.

Read more: //link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11845-022-02930-1

A lot has been contributed by the public health community in terms of prevention, infection control but public health has a lot to offer to the emerging field of patient safety science. Specialized degree programs in the field of patient safety practice remain scarce. Most patient safety practitioners are not trained in public health. Patient safety officers, risk managers, quality improvement personnel are from different fields with little academic preparation to support their roles focusing on patient safety. Schools and programs of public health should focus on pressing population health issues of patient safety and patient harm. Development of degree and certificate programs  should be taken into consideration by schools of public health by encouraging faculty research. By framing patient safety and patient harm as a public health issue, a significant contribution can be made to the literature and patient safety practice which will have a real impact on population by the schools of Public Health. To read more, click on the link //www.researchgate.net/publication/264288131_Patient_safety_This_is_public_health

Patient safety is a framework of organized activities that creates cultures, processes, procedures, technologies, and environments in health care that consistently and sustainably lower risks, reduce the occurrence of avoidable harm, and make the error less likely to reduce its impact when it does occur.

The WHO Patient Safety flagship facilitates sustainable improvements in patient safety and managing risks to prevent patient harm by:

1. accelerating country support and capacity-building through the Global Patient Safety Collaborative;
2. engaging and empowering patients and families through the Patients for Patient Safety initiative, including building the capacity of patient safety advocates from worldwide patients organizations;
3. improving patient safety metrics through the development of standards, indicators, data collection tools, and assessments;
4. facilitating the identification of research priorities, promoting implementation research, and supporting digital and innovative approaches for patient safety improvement;
5. providing strategic support to establish and implement incident reporting and learning, and surveillance systems.

//www.who.int/teams/integrated-health-services/patient-safety/about

The NHS has been working on two foundations: a patient safety culture and a patient safety system to improve patient safety. Three strategies have been developed to fulfill the aims-
• improving understanding of safety by drawing intelligence from multiple sources of patient safety information (Insight)

• equipping patients, staff, and partners with the skills and opportunities to improve patient safety throughout the whole system (Involvement)

• designing and supporting programs that deliver effective and sustainable change in the most important areas (Improvement).

//www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/190708_Patient_Safety_Strategy_for_website_v4.pdf

Public health and patient safety are two significant components of healthcare that aim to protect the public health and safety of communities through a range of approaches such as safety standards, implementing nutrition programs, and patient safety is a healthcare discipline. Patient safety relates to the prevention and reduction of harm, as well as infection control; the tools and techniques of public health components have significantly more to offer than the developing public health science. patient safety is a major concern in global public health, with one in 300 chance of patient whole being harmed during healthcare (1).

Prevention and reduction of harm should focus on patients during healthcare, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Public health focuses on the whole population, while healthcare focuses on individual patients. Using conservative estimates, the most recent data suggest that patient injury is the 14th major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide i.e 42.7 million adverse events occur during hospital care (2).

These factors were linked to self-reporting error, service process, communication error, human factors related to healthcare providers and human factors related to patients (lack of attention, stress, anger, and fatigue), the healthcare environment, technical factors, and poor objective measures of errors (3).

References

1. Patient safety: This is public health. Academia.edu - Share research.  //www.academia.edu/76824505/Patient_safety_this_is_public_heal

3. Hall, L., Johnson, J., Watt, I., Tsipa, A., & O’Connor, D. B. Healthcare Staff Wellbeing, Burnout, and Patient Safety: A Systematic Review. 11(7), e0159015–e0159015. //doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159015

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