NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1: Enhancing Quality and Safety

Enhancing Quality and Safety Improvement

Nurses play a vital part in enhancing patient quality and safety as they primarily deliver care treatments through medicine administration and monitoring (Alomari et al., 2020). In Arnold Palmer Hospital, patient safety issues related to patient identification crimes are growing extensively, impacting several cases regarding medicine and treatment crimes. Therefore, this assessment will claw into perfecting patient safety issues of identification crimes and incorporate evidence-tested results to promote patient safety and care collaboration. 

Factors leading to specific patient safety risks

Case safety is a critical consideration when delivering healthcare services in healthcare associations. One of the significant patient safety risks is associated with crimes in patient identification, as they can pose grave risks to cases, analogous to the provision of wrong treatment leading to health deterioration (Bell et al., 2020). Different things can lead to patient identification crimes, similar to issues with entering data by hand, inconsistent case identification methods, and poor or old Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Manual data entry of patient information can result in misinterpretations caused by undecipherable handwriting or typographical errors. These misapprehensions can lead to patient identification crimes (Bell et al., 2020). 

Inconsistent identification protocols across multiple healthcare installations can contribute to dilemmas and misapprehensions. Hence, a lack of standardized procedures increases the liability of misidentification. Likewise, deficient or outdated information in EHRs can result in misidentification. Such a case can be when patient records are not regularly streamlined with accurate demographic details. Physicians are also prone to entering wrong-patient order entries, as one study relates that these crimes regard nearly 600,000 cases with wrong order entries in the U.S. (Salmasian et al., 2020). 

Evidence-Based Practice Solutions for Patient Identification Errors to Enhance Patient Safety and Diminish Costs

It’s important to address patient identification crimes, as they can lead to poor patient safety and frequent medicine and treatment crimes. For this purpose, applying confirmation-based practices to avoid patient identification crimes is obligatory. One of these confirmation-tested practice results is administering barcode systems within the association. The use of barcoding systems for patient identification has proven to reduce drug crimes and enhance patient identification rates. One study finds that using barcode technology for drug administration increased patient identification rates from 74 to 100 and reduced drug crimes (Barakat & Franklin, 2020). Another strategy is integrating biometric technologies similar to point or voice tone recognition to promote accurate case identification. 

Another new biometric fashion experimenters use is iris recognition systems for correct and accurate case identification. This result involves acquiring cases’ iris images, storing the features as iris templates, and matching them with cases’ irises for identification (Anne et al., 2020). Initially, Riplinger et al. (2020) emphasized that sanatorium associations must develop standardized case identification protocols to reduce identification crimes and improve patient safety. These technologies and confirmation-based strategies can potentially increase patient safety by reducing identification crimes. Likewise, costs can be effectively reduced by precluding costs associated with adverse events and rework due to crimes (Riplinger et al., 2020). 

The Role of Nurses in Improving Patient Safety and Reducing Costs 

Nurses have an enormous part in care collaboration to grease case safety and limit costs substantially related to pitfalls leading to patient identification crimes. They can ensure adherence to patient identification protocols during colorful healthcare relations similar to admissions, drug administration, and case collection. 

For illustration, administering the “two-case identifier” rule, where nurses constantly use at least two unique identifiers for cases, such as names and birth dates, before presiding over specifics, helps reduce the trouble of patient identification crimes during drug administration (Simamora, 2020). Nurses can laboriously use technologies similar to barcoding systems during their quotidian tasks to ensure accurate case identification. For illustration, surveying a case’s wristbands and drug barcodes before administering specifics helps corroborate patient identity and drug match, which reduces the liability of crimes (Owens et al., 2020). 

Nurses can encourage patients and their family members to partake in their care by vindicating their individualities and information. Case safety is enhanced by educating cases to confirm their names and birthdates during relations with healthcare providers, as empowered cases perform fresh layers of identification (Simamora, 2020). Originally, nurses could contribute to quality enhancement enterprises to identify and palliate patient identification pitfalls within their healthcare settings.

Nurses help assess system weaknesses and enable corrective actions to prevent similar errors in the future by participating in root cause analysis after a patient identification error incident (Vaismoradi et al., 2020). By coordinating care with applicable stakeholders, nurses can perform strategies to reduce identification crimes and the costs associated with drug crimes and adverse events due to misapplied patient cases (Simamora, 2020). 

Nurses’ Collaboration with Other Stakeholders

Nurses must coordinate and unite with applicable stakeholders to adequately and neatly address patient identification crimes to enhance patient safety and reduce associated costs. The linked stakeholders for this purpose will be croakers, apothecaries, health information technology (megahit) professionals, quality enhancement armies, and sanatorium directors. Physicians and apothecaries are involved in defining and allocating drugs. Coordinating with these stakeholders ensures alignment in patient identification protocols and reinforces a party’s commitment to delicacy. For this purpose, it’s essential to communicate with these stakeholders in homogenizing identification processes during patient hassles and reducing the pitfalls of crimes due to misidentification (Alomari et al., 2020). 

Megahit professionals are responsible for administering and maintaining EHR systems and technology results. Nurses must unite with IT officers to ensure the proper functioning of patient identification technologies, such as barcoding systems and biometric tools, to reduce homemade crimes and enhance delicacy in patient identification. They will also need to coordinate with quality enhancement armies, as their primary thing is to identify and palliate pitfalls for overall safety and quality of care (Alomari et al., 2020). 

Nurses can effectively unite with QI officers to address the root causes of identification crimes and apply demanded procedures and technologies. Sanatorium directors will set programs for the safe and accurate identification of cases and allocate coffers to integrate demanded technologies or processes. Nurses can coordinate with sanatorium leadership to garner support for patient safety enterprises and raise mindfulness about prevailing causes of identification crimes. Together, they can foster a culture that prioritizes accurate case identification for the safety of cases (Owens et al., 2020).

Conclusion

The case identification crimes at Arnold Palmer Hospital involve the performance of confirmation-tested results similar to barcoding systems, standardized procedures, and biometric technologies. Numerous factors increase patient safety risks, leading to case identification crimes. In this context, the role of the nurse is essential for improving patient safety and reducing costs. The assignment also requires coordinating with other applicable stakeholders to ensure accurate case identification using unique case identifier approaches.