Chapters authored
Patient Safety: Preventing Patient Harm and Building Capacity for Patient Safety
Patient safety is a global public health concern. It is a health care discipline with ever evolving advancement and complexity resulting in consequential rise in patient harm. Since the pandemic, patient safety has been threatened even more by laying bare the inadequacies of health systems. Many unsafe care practices, risks, and errors contribute to patient harm and overall economic burden. These include medical, diagnostic, and radiation errors, healthcare associated infections, unsafe surgical procedures and transfusion practices, sepsis, venous thromboembolism, and falls. Although patient safety has become an integral part of the healthcare delivery model and resources have been dedicated towards it, much still needs to be achieved. An attitude of inclusivity for all care teams and anyone in contact with the patient, including the patients themselves, would enhance patient safety. Incorporating this attitude from educational infancy will allow for better identification of medical errors and inculcate critical analysis of process improvement. Implementing the ‘Just Culture’ by health care organizations can build the infrastructure to eliminate avoidable harm. To reduce avoidable harm and improve safety, a constant flow of information and knowledge should be available to mitigate the risks. Lastly, proper communication and effective leadership can play an imperative role to engage stakeholders and reduce harm.
Part of the book: Contemporary Topics in Patient Safety
Patient Safety in Emergency Medical Services
Patients deserve high-quality, evidence-based care delivered from the moment they call for help to the moment they are safely delivered to the hospital. Often patient safety is not viewed as a fun or exciting topic by prehospital clinicians, but it need not be a burden. A culture of safety in emergency medical services can enhance patient outcomes and improve the overall safety in a community. The design and structure of the ambulance are the first layer of protection for patients. Couple that with ambulance operations topics, such as speed and light and siren use and that covers a large swath of the patient safety engineered into the system. There are patient-focused topics such as medication safety protocols, structured handoffs, and competency assessments of high-risk procedures that all serve to increase patient safety. Lastly, an emergency medical services clinician-oriented topic that also heavily impacts our patients is fatigue mitigation. Actively addressing fatigue and employing fatigue mitigation strategies can be used to enhance the safety of patients and will likely enhance the experience of prehospital clinicians in the organization.
Part of the book: Contemporary Topics in Patient Safety