What Can Doctors Do to Improve Patient Safety Daily?

There’s a wonderful recent interest in increasing patient safety. Sometimes doctors and healthcare workers are too busy to consider it. They forget that there’s more to their job than just diagnosing and treating. It’s important to keep a patient safe throughout that process and as long as they’re under you care. From an administrative point of view improving patient safety makes a lot of sense as well. The safer the patients of a hospital are the less likely the hospital is to get sued and have to pay in damages. Recently a lot of hospitals have hired additional personnel and teams that focus solely on improving patient safety and infection control.

It can be a lot for doctors to worry about so it’s important that the task is the responsibility of the entire team not just the physicians. Doctors already have many duties and piling more can result in burnout and fatigue. When a doctor suffers from burnout they’re less likely to want to help patients and do their job as competently as possible which will reflect negatively on patient safety. This is why hiring specialized teams make a lot of sense. A lot goes into this such as establishing a culture of safety and building better doctor patient relationships.

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that medicine revolves around doctor patient relationships. If the relationship is bad then the medical outcomes will be bad. If the relationship is good then it’ll reflect positively on the outcomes. Each physician needs to give adequate amounts of time to his or her patients. Sometimes a diagnosis is so easy it can be made the moment a patient walks in the door or starts talking, but it would be wrong to rush them and end the meeting between the two of you. Listen carefully maybe the patient has something to add that may make a difference in the management plan. Even if they don’t have valuable information, patients still appreciate being listened to. Some patients switch doctors simply because their first doctor wasn’t giving them much time.

Showing patients that you care is also a valuable skill. You need to understand their suffering but not necessarily feel it yourself. It can help and relieve a patient just to have someone to talk to, someone who understands what they’re going through. When it’s time to discuss the management plan it’s important for a doctor to be as clear and precise as possible. Don’t leave anything that may be misinterpreted by the patient. Be clear about the drugs and the doses. You should also warn them about common side effects and what to do if these side effects occur. For instance rifampicin is an antibiotic that causes urine to turn red. There’s no harm in that but a patient may believe they’re bleeding internally and be frightened. A simple one minute explanation would eliminate any confusion.

Through a good relationship with patients, doctors can eliminate misunderstandings and therefore improve patient safeties. Patients will realize what happens if they miss a dose or take an additional one. A patient with chronic joint pain will understand that physiotherapy is much better for their overall health than relying on painkillers. It can be easy to rush patients due to the large workload but it’s important to keep these things in mind.

From a financial aspect it makes a lot of sense to pay attention to patient safety. Insurance companies and the government are focusing on the quality of service provided. If it’s not up to standards then you or your hospital simply may not get paid. So if a hospital wants to keep making money it needs to focus on that and realize that by spending a little extra they will in return make more. It’s also noticeable that it costs more to not have high quality services than to do. Mistakes will cost money without a doubt so by minimizing mistakes you’re also saving money.

Creating a safety culture is one of the best techniques to improve patient safety. The entire hospital has to be concerned about patient safety and realize how important it is. That way the entire healthcare team is involved regardless of status. A junior doctor may alert an attending that they’re doing something that may be hazardous to a patient’s health. The entire team is involved and everyone is coaching everyone. This creates a team spirit and brings people closer together. It may be difficult at first as some people prefer having a higher status than others and don’t like being criticized but they’ll realize in time that this is better for everyone including them.

National or universal safety protocols won’t apply to each hospital or clinic. Each hospital has its own settings, problems, and equipment. That’s why as an administrator you can’t expect everything to be up to protocol standards. Extra work may be required as certain equipment may be missing or something may not be working right now. This also applies to hospitals in third world countries. It’s good to aspire to international protocols but it’s better to realize one’s own problems and work from the bottom up. So administrators need to listen to their staff in order to receive feedback on difficulties they’re facing in so they can work on them.

There are teams that specialize in improving patient safety that hospitals can hire to boost the quality they provide. These teams focus on creating a safety culture, medication safety, and infection control. These people are experts in these areas and really help make hospitals better places. Some hospitals retrain their already existing staff to comply with patient safety protocols. In fact, some administrations may fire physicians who don’t comply with these protocols or make repeated mistakes.

Research on patient safety is money well spent. Some hospitals may stick to what worked for others and that may be fine as long as it works for them. Others, however; choose to spend money on patient safety research. This helps them find what works best for them and their patients. It also adds to the medical community as other hospitals learn from the research conducted. On the long run this will bring in more money to the hospital as it becomes one of the best at patient safety and will also boost its reputations among those working in healthcare. It’s always more productive to contribute rather than just someone who applies what is already known and has been discovered by others.

Equipment and technology also play a role in patient safety. The last thing you need is a device catching on fire and resulting in physical or psychological harm to a patient. Even a simple malfunction that leads to erroneous results hurts patients as it can lead to a wrong diagnosis or management plan which may end up being catastrophic. An administration will stop believing that it’s saving money by not replacing malfunctioning equipment when it receives an expensive lawsuit.

Patient safety is a serious issue in today’s healthcare. It affects everyone from the chief of staff in a hospital to the most inexperienced doctor or nurse. A varied approach is needed such as establishing a safety culture, making sure technology and equipment are at least adequate, hiring specialized teams, and even working on research. Focusing on doctor patient relationships is also essential in order to limit misunderstandings and increase patient compliance as they understand what to do and what to avoid. This also helps patient know what to expect.

Forget you’re a physician for a moment and picture yourself as a patient. Wouldn’t you want to get the best service possible? The very least a hospital can do if they don’t treat your condition is to not add to your ailments and increase your suffering.