Patient Safety in Hospitals

Patient Safety
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Institution / Affiliation
Patient safety
Patient safety plays an essential role in the delivery of quality health care services. Globally, adverse events due to unsafe care are prevalent and lead to many deaths and disabilities. Annually, nearly 134 million adverse events occur in hospitals due to unsafe practices, causing over 2.6 million deaths (World Health Organization, 2020). This is to mean that as many as four in ten patients are harmed in primary and outpatient healthcare due to detrimental medical errors related to prescription, diagnosis, and medication use. Besides 15% of total hospital activity and expenditure is directly attributed to unsafe practices (World Health Organization, 2020). Over 50% of adverse events can be prevented by adopting safety practices in health services (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). Therefore, reducing unsafe care practices can lead to better patient outcomes and financial savings.
To have a healthy population, health services should be safe, effective, and patient-centered. Patient safety entails all activities used to prevent and reduce medical errors, risks, and harm to patients during the provision of healthcare (World Health Organization, 2020). With the advancements of technology, the healthcare system considers the increasing complexity in healthcare settings, thus making humans more prone to mistakes (Natalia & Beata, 2016). For example, a patient may receive the wrong medication in a hospital ward due to confusion about analogous medicine packaging. In such a scenario, poor communication, lack of standard procedures of storing medicines, lack of patient involvement, and verification of before administration may be attributed to such medical errors.
When taken as prescribed, medicines play a vital role in monitoring chronic conditions, treating short-term conditions, and improving overall health and wellbeing. For example, in the United States, 89% of the population takes at least one medication, while 29% take five or more medications (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). Thus said, medication errors are prevalent in health care facilities and occur from the prescribing, transcribing, documenting, dispensing, administering, and monitoring processes (World Health Organization, 2020). This can be attributed to high prescription medicines and countless overt-the-counter drugs.
To complicate the practioners' responsibility during patient care, there are thousands of health herbs, potions, and supplements used to treat medical problems. Given the higher number of substances in the market, the risk of health professional prescribing and dispensing the wrong medication is very high. For example, in the United States, nearly 9000 patients die annually due to medication error (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). Alternatively, over $4 billion are spent in excess in looking for patients with medication associated errors. Also, the patients experience physical and psychological pain as a result of medication error (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). Similarly, it leads to reduced patients satisfaction and a lack of trust in the healthcare system.
Medication safety is crucial in any health care settings. Globally, adverse drug events cause over 1.3 million emergency department visits and 350,000 hospitalizations every year. The adverse drug events in hospitals are more likely to surge due to the development of new medicines, rising number of the aging population, the discovery of new uses for older drugs, increased use of medicines for the treatments and prevention of diseases, and expansion of insurance programs for prescription medicines (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020).
The leading causes of adverse drug events visits include anticoagulants, diabetes drugs, opioids, analgesics, and antibiotics. Among children and adolescents, antibiotics are the main cause of adverse drug events. In older adults, 65 years and above, anticoagulants and diabetes drugs are the leading causes of emergence visits adverse drug events. Over 75000 children below 18 years old are admitted to the emergency departments every year due to unintentional medication poisoning. Over 80% of the visits can be rooted in drugs' uptake without adult supervision (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). On the other hand, over 177000 adults in the United States visit the emergency departments for adverse drug events.
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