This year, the 5th
Annual World Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit
focused on 13 Actionable Patient Safety Solutions (APSS), which the
Patient Safety Movement believes can reduce the number of
preventable deaths in hospitals to zero by 2020.
In addition to general issues that are of
concern across the healthcare sector, the APSS focuses on the following
challenges:
- Venous Thromboembolism (VTE)
- Mental Health
- Paediatric Adverse Drug Events
In order to achieve the goal of
significantly reducing hospital mistakes and preventable patient deaths, each
hospital and institution needs to adopt a variety of workable measures towards
an effective model.
The 2017 summit, which took place on
February 3-4 and included plenary speakers and panels involving a variety of
experts in the field, proposes 13 APSS, which include these top actionable
solutions:
Ø Challenge One: Creating a
Culture of Safety
Organisations that achieve high reliability in effectively reducing serious
hazards have emphasised safety culture as a key factor in promoting excellence
in performance. However, many healthcare organizations struggle to achieve it. An executive
summary checklist was compiled by the Patient Safety Movement to help
managers to implement recommended changes, while additional information on this
APSS, including infrastructure advice and a technology plan are provided in an online
document.
According to the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Lucian Leape Institute (2015), a culture of safety that fully supports high reliability has three central attributes: trust, report, and improve.
Ø Challenge Two: Healthcare-Associated Infections
An executive summary checklist (adapted from the WHO Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Framework), as well as further advice about this APSS, is available as an online document from the Patient Safety Movement.
There is emerging evidence that electronic hand hygiene compliance systems, when combined with appropriate staff feedback and multi modal action plans can lead to reduced infections and avoided costs. Visit http://www.ehcohealth.org/the-evidence/ for a list of scientific studies.
Ø Challenge Three: Medication Errors
Success in implementing this Actionable Patient Safety Solution will rely on implanting a technology plan using systems detailed in this APSS guidance document from the Patient Safety Movement.
The document also presents an executive summary checklist to help leaders to implement this APSS.
Ø Challenge Four: Failure to Rescue: Monitoring for Opioid Induced Respiratory Depression
Establishing an effective program to reduce opioid-induced respiratory depression will require full hospital administration support to complete actionable steps detailed in the Patient Safety Movement APSS document.
Continuous pulse oximetry, continuous respiratory rate monitoring, and continuous respiratory rate monitoring are listed within a recommended technology plan.
Ø Challenge Five: Anaemia and Transfusion - A Patient Safety Concern
A detailed actionable checklist is provided
in the Patient
Safety Movement document for this APSS, along with information on various
means for achieving effective measures.
Within the technology plan are suggestions to implement electronic health record (EHR) fields requiring documentation of clinical indication for transfusion and hemoglobin value prior to each RBC unit; and to implement noninvasive and continuous hemoglobin monitoring (SpHb® adhesive sensors connected to rainbow SET monitors with SpHb, or a multi-parameter patient monitor with SpHb, including but not limited to the Dräger® M540/Infinity Acute Care System, Welch Allyn® CVSM, Fukuda Denshi® 8500, Saadat® Aria and Alborz monitors, GE®, Philips®, and more).
Ø Challenge Six: Hand-Off Communications
When hand-off communications (HOC) information is absent, incomplete, erroneous or delayed, serious patient harm may occur. According to the Patient Safety Movement, the establishment of accurate, complete, timely and effective HOC requires that the healthcare administration devise and support an implementation plan that includes actionable steps detailed in its APSS guidelines for HOC.
According to the report, the
technologies utilised should focus on ensuring that at the point of hand-off,
all data critical to the care of the patient are communicated by the sender,
and are applied in real-time by the receiver to ensure that required care is
executed in an accurate and timely manner.
Full Details of all 13 APSS
For full details of all 13 of the
Actionable Patient Safety Solutions proposed at the 5th
Annual World Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit,
visit the Patient Safety Movement actionable
solutions page, from which healthcare leaders can
download comprehensive guidelines for achieving patient safety targets.
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