Safety in healthcare is essential in ensuring quality services. Safety in healthcare services is a measure of quality in that safety issues in healthcare translate to poor quality services and vice versa. Various patient safety risks and concerns exist in healthcare settings, leading to poor outcomes, loss of trust in the healthcare system, increased costs, and increased hospital length of stay. Quality healthcare also entails patient-centered care, utilization of evidence-based practice, clinical guidelines, and implementation of patient safety initiatives.
This paper examines Healthcare Associated Infections (HAI), a safety quality issue affecting my healthcare setting, and provides evidence-based solutions to address the issue. Additionally, the paper will explore the factors leading to patient safety risks in the healthcare setting, the evidence-based and best-practice solutions to improve patient safety and reduce costs, explain how nurses can help coordinate care to increase patient safety and reduce costs, and finally, identifies stakeholders with whom nurses would coordinate to drive safety enhancements with the safety quality issue.
Hospital-associated infections are infections that patients acquire while receiving healthcare services in a healthcare setting, including inpatient and outpatient settings. Various factors lead to HAIs in a healthcare setting. A major factor contributing to HAIs is poor maintenance and use of medical devices. Medical devices such as catheters and ventilators cause infections when not used and maintained appropriately. The other factor is the failure to maintain adequate infection control practices. According to Ripa et al. (2021), failure to adhere to recommended infection control measures significantly contributes to hospital-acquired infections.
Furthermore, patient factors may lead to HIAs in a healthcare setting. Ripa et al. (2021) note that some patients have a high risk of contracting HAIs. These include patients with compromised immune systems, underlying conditions prone to infections, and prolonged hospital stays. Understaffing and high workloads are other issues leading to HIAs. In understaffed settings, care providers have high patient-to-staff ratios, which increases the workload, potentially leading to lapses in infection control practices.
The World Health Organization (2021) developed a patient safety action plan to eliminate harm in healthcare settings, emphasizing the essence of infection prevention and control practices. Every healthcare setting should adhere to strict infection prevention and control measures and develop policies customized to the institution’s needs. Infection control measures include appropriate use of personal protective equipment for the care providers, disinfection of surfaces, environmental cleaning, and adherence to isolation precautions.
The other best-practice solution to improve patient safety and reduce costs is surveillance and monitoring patient safety issues. According to Duarte et al. (2020), healthcare institutions can reduce patient safety issues by creating robust surveillance systems to monitor patient safety issues, including tracking antimicrobial resistance patterns and identifying outbreaks, which allows for early detection and prompt response to prevent further infection transmission. Additionally, educating care providers on infection control practices, guidelines, and protocols is vital in improving patient safety and reducing costs.
Nurses significantly help in coordinating care to improve patient safety and reduce costs. As among the care team leaders, nurses can mobilize other healthcare providers in initiatives aimed at improving patient safety and reducing care costs (Vaismoradi et al., 2020). For example, nurses can lead in infection prevention and control staff education and programs, ensuring all care providers are aware of the practices, policies, and protocols, thus improving patient safety and reducing costs.
Nurses also coordinate care by ensuring seamless communication among the care team, preventing gaps in care that wou
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