Review of patient safety and medical error

Review of Patient Safety & Medical Error Name Institutional Affiliation Course Name & Number Professor Due Date Introduction Patient safety refers to the absence of intentional or unintentional harm towards a patient and the reduced risk of unnecessary harm during healthcare delivery to the absolute maximum. All patients have core rights that ensure healthcare safety. However, safety is always threatened by various aspects, including medical errors. According to Garrouste-Orgeas, Philippart, Bruel, Max, Lau and Misset (1), Medical errors are a severe health issues in the United States, accounting for the third highest death in the country. On estimate, about 400,000 patients admitted to hospital endure preventable medical errors yearly, costing the healthcare system about 20 billion dollars per year with hospital infection costing about 45 billion yearly1. The magnitude and potential of errors are enormous and continue to become a common feature in the healthcare system. Thus, understanding its causes, classification, consequences, and ways to avoid them is a significant avenue for alleviating the harm healthcare processes impose on patients.  Definition of patient safety Patient safety refers to preventing harm that may occur among patients by ensuring the utilized care delivery system averts medical errors, rectifies based on those that occur, and is founded on principles of safety, which reduce the risk of unnecessary harm in healthcare to an acceptable minimum. According to experts, from a broad perspective, safety for patients means being free from unintended or preventable harm caused by medical care through steps that develop cultures, procedures, guidelines, behaviors, tools, and atmospheres in healthcare that continually lower patients’ risks and occurrence of harm and errors2.  Attaining patient safety necessitates patient safety practices, which attempt to diminish the risk of negative outcomes with exposure to medical care during various diagnoses or conditions. Such negative events include preventable adverse events that result from error or failure to apply acceptable prevention strategies and ameliorable negative effects, which are unpreventable events that can be less serious if a different type of care is offered. Also, adverse events due to negligence refer to when healthcare falls short of the expected standard of care that should be offered by medical professionals2. Patient safety also seeks to protect patients from near-miss hazards that can lead to harm, but the patient is safe because of luck and early discovery. Errors, either by doing something incorrectly or not doing the right things, can expose patients to harmful situations.  Etiology of medical error These preventable negative effects of care to a patient occur for several reasons. Communication breakdown is the primary cause of medical errors. Written and spoken communication is vital in healthcare as proper care relies on joint efforts of numerous medical individuals for accurate diagnoses, testing, treatment, and explanation of the process of care3. According to experts, miscommunication among a doctor, nurse, lab technologist, and pharmacist increases the chances of a doctor prescribing medication a patient is allergic to due to a lack of complete patient medical records or prescribing the wrong medication. Medical professional fatigue is another cause of medical errors. Doctors and nurses work long shifts and are typically overworked, which can lead to adverse effects. According to Ramadan and Al-Saleh (4), more than half of medical professionals are sleep deprived, getting an average of 4 hours of sleep, with the rest sleeping for about 6.4 hours4. As a result of inadequate sleep, they develop exhaustion, a decrease in cognitive function, slow response and reaction time, difficulty grasping and retaining new information, and irritability. These issues cause a doctor or a nurse to make judgment errors, affecting the care of patients and resulting in medical errors. Failure to follow procedures has a significant chance of leading to medical errors. Medical professionals may fail to follow procedures for a variety of reasons. Ignorance and carelessness causes a failure to observe the appropriate medical procedure and guidelines, such as counting procedure items after surgery and double-checking the specific organ requiring surgery. Hence, it results in medical equipment being left inside a patient or operating on the wrong organ. Rushing through a medical procedure can result in mislabeling samples and failure to ascertain that the patient is not allergic to any medication or that they are the right patient for the particular procedure5. Failure to get proper training and experience can make practitioners fail to observe procedures, policies, and patients’ needs as they are unaware of what is expected to keep the patient alive. Technical or equipment failure is another cause of medical errors. In some cases, diagnostic and treatment machines and materials fail. These may include a defibrillator providing less shock or an infusion pump dispensing incorrect dosage5. As a result, patients receive incorrect medicine dosage and insufficient electric current charge during cardiac arrest resuscitation due to insufficient shock, causing medical errors.  Classification of Medical Error Medical errors can be classified in various ways. Medication errors occur in the process of medical use, from when a doctor prescribes the drug, enters the information in the system, dispensing the drug, giving it, and when the patient takes it. According to research, one in every nine medical malpractices is medical err...