Preventable Harm in Health Care

Chloe Arnette

John Isenhour

ENG.111.5H13

14 November 2018

Preventable Harm in Health Care

Preventable harm in health care is a public health issue, estimates place it as a leading cause of death in the United States with millions of people being harmed while receiving care in hospitals yearly. It has killed 440,000 thousands people in 2013 according to an Institute of Medicine report. Most care provided in the United States is for the most part high quality and safe, but on the other hand technical and treatment advances create new opportunities for unintentional, preventable harm to occur. As emphasized in the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) report To Err Is Human, errors and injuries that occur during care may cause significant mortality and morbidity, and can undermine patients’ quality of life.

The main idea of preventable harm is having an efficient and safety coordinated system. Healthcare is formed by workers dedicated to helping others, but they fall short from keeping patients out of harm. According to the National Patient Safety Foundation, the healthcare system needs to organized and constructed to a coordinated system to prevent harm and help the safety of patients. People hold trust in the healthcare system to help them get better and this trust is broken when simple procedures turn fatal and a patient is killed. The proposed solution to preventing harm in health care is improving hand hygiene, being sure to verify medications, and adopting a public framework.

Hygiene is one of many solutions to fix this epidemic of preventable harm. Pathogens and microorganisms are transferred through contact. According to David Bornstein, author of “Reducing Preventable Harm in Hospitals” says about one in twenty-five patients get an infection that is lethal,“These infections are caused by doctors not washing their hand and touching the central line catheterizations that goes into the patients” says Bornstein. The benefit of hygiene is that it will reduce the rate of microorganisms being transferred from doctor to patient through touch, which will subsequently reduce the number of patients that are infected in the hospital setting. This solution is possible with the cooperation of the individuals in the workplace coming together to reduce harm that is caused in hospitals.

Another solution to reduce preventable harm is to make sure workers verify medication before handing it off to a patient. A medication error is an error at any step along the pathway that begins when a doctor prescribes a medication and ends when the patient actually receives the medication. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices has a list of high-alert medications that can cause significant damage if used in error. These include medications that have dangerous adverse effects, but also include look-alike and sound-alike medications: those that have similar names and physical appearance but completely different pharmaceutical properties.

With the implementation of workers being required to double-check the prescription and medication they are giving their client, the amount of preventable harm in hospitals could be reduced drastically. The solution proposed would be possible similarly to hygiene, with the cooperation of others and for workers to follow protocol and to have carefulness with the drugs being handled.

A new Call to Action, developed by the National Patient Safety Foundation, provides the framework for that response and identifies roles for key stakeholders. The detailed Call to Action builds on successful efforts to reduce healthcare-associated infections and take advantage of critical lessons learned. Researchers have specified five phases through which basic scientific discoveries are translated into improved population health. These phases are analogous to those of new drug development and provide a useful framework for researchers, clinicians, and policy makers to understand and address the complexity of creating and implementing evidence-based strategies for preventing adverse healthcare events.