ESSAY: Safety, Quality, and Informatics

Preparation
As you prepare for this assessment, complete the following:

Before you begin, examine your organization’s history of safety in a specific area and how your organization addresses patient safety issues. If possible, consult with a key stakeholder in the organization (such as an administrator) to better understand specific patient-safety concerns and how the organization is working to resolve the concerns. This person should also be able to discuss some of the organizational barriers impacting the patient safety issue.
Next, look at the basic concepts, principles, and practices that contribute to organizational quality improvement and patient safety. Review the literature for best practices and how technology might be used to improve the issue.
Finally, be sure to consider the legal and ethical implications associated with the safety issue, as well as possible organizational barriers to change.
Directions
As you construct this assessment, address each point as completely as possible:

Describe a patient-safety issue within your organization, comparing the way your organization addresses the issue with the concepts, principles, and practices that contribute to quality improvement and patient safety.
Analyze the legal and ethical consequences of not addressing the issue.
Recommend evidence-based interventions, including technology, to address the patient-safety issue.
Describe strategies to overcome specific organizational barriers to change, based on your knowledge of the organization.
Additional Requirements
Format: Include a title page and reference page. Use APA style and formatting.
Length: Ensure your completed assessment is 8–10 pages in length, not including the title page and reference page.
References: Cite at least five current scholarly or professional resources.
Font: Use double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font.

ANSWER

Patient safety is a very important practice that every healthcare organization has to practice. It is all about how hospitals and other healthcare organizations lay down adequate measures that can ensure patients are protected from medication errors, injuries, possible accidents, as well as infections. Statistically, every year, healthcare organizations witness increased rates of morbidity and mortality as a result of safety measures that if avoided could have reduced such incidences (Barbier, Andremont, Wolff & Bouadma, 2013). In the US, patient safety has been made a number one priority at every medical facility. It is also basic ethical practice that adequate measures are put up by hospitals to protect their patients from safety issues that can cause harm. Some of the common safety issues at medical facilities include: Effective electronic health record systems, hand hygiene, poor nurse to patient ratio, medical errors and shortage of drugs or medical supply. This essay will look at hospital-acquired infections that has been rampantly reported in my organization. Thereafter, the paper seeks to come up with a plan to help improve on patient safety and outcome.

Patient Safety Issue and How It Is Addressed

My organization has had a continued and persistent reports on hospital-acquired infections. Such infections are sensitive and makes all stakeholders question how such infections reach to patients and what is it that the healthcare organization is not doing right. Hospital-acquired infections are risky as they are acquired while the patient is in the process of recovery within a facility that is supposed to better address safety issues (Mehta e al., 2014). In our organization, most of hospital-acquired infections have been reported at the intensive care unit where serious diseases are to be treated. This is very worrying since it makes medical more complex. Making matters more complicated, most antibiotics continue to receive resistance making it even worse for our organization.

Based on the organization’s analysis, there is a very high chance that hospital-acquired infections within our organization is as a result of lack of hand washing practices and poor hygiene. Since infections are viral, bacterial as well as fungal infections, they can spread very fast. The patients in the ICU end up spending an additional 7 days on average once they are confirmed to have had a hospital-acquired infections. Some even end up being readmitted. The question however is why the surgical related acquired infections are most common within the organization. Based on evidence-based research, hospital-acquired infections may be as a result of healthcare providers failing to wash their hands appropriately using soap or water or a hand rub that is alcohol based before or after caring for every patient they handle (Dancer, 2014). Failing to use catheters appropriately or cleaning the…