For Patient Safety To Improve, These 3 Things Must Happen First

Over the years there have been many suggestions offered by people in the healthcare industry on how to improve patient safety, but whether or not hospitals or healthcare executives are actually listening it's hard to really tell.There are quite a few organizations that are dedicated to improving patient safety. The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) has been around since 1997. Just recently the organization announced the creation of a program called the NPSF Patient Safety Coalition, which is a program to align stakeholders from across the continuum of care in a unifying mission to make healthcare safer for all.When you hear about studies such as the one conducted by Johns Hopkins Hospital in which researchers discovered that a surgeon in the U.S. leaves a foreign object in a patient's body at least 39 times per week and that wrong type of surgery is performed on a patient about 20 times per week, it does make you wonder if hospitals are truly making efforts to put patient safety first.So what exactly will it take to improve patient safety?We can talk about improving hospital systems or improving communication between healthcare professionals and providers, but there are a few things that need to be put in place if we are to ever truly experience change. These things are more about changing the attitude and mental paradigm of people working in the healthcare industry.


Acceptance of change - Everyone within an organization needs to be on the same page when it comes to making changes to the system. People have to recognize that improvement is necessary. Even having a few people who are not open to making changes can make it that more challenging for the organization as a whole to advance to another level of care.Commitment - Every single medical professional working within an organization must make the commitment to put patients first above all. Through monthly meetings, newsletter, or reminders posted in work areas, you can keep the idea of patient safety at the forefront of people's minds on a daily basis.Positive Daily Habits - It's been said that it takes about 21 days for change to take place, so positive actions and tasks have to be performed daily to turn them into a habit. Whether it's a new way of administering medication or a new way of interacting with patients, the focus has to be doing these tasks well and doing it with every patient.What are your thoughts about improving patient care? Are there any tips that you would add to this?