Prof. Name

Date

Improvement Plan In-Service Presentation

Hi everyone, I am —–, and I work at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children as a baccalaureate-prepared nurse and team lead role; I am mentoring today’s session on an improvement plan. This safety improvement plan in-service presentation stemmed from evaluating the root-cause analysis of recently growing patient-identification error issues. I hope you all have a learning session today and practice more vigilantly to prevent the incidence of patient identification errors for children at our hospital.

Agenda and Outcomes

 I will talk about the purpose and goals of the in-service session, the processes that need to be improved related to patient identification, and the role of the audience in addressing this safety concern. Moreover, I will also create resources and activities to encourage skill development and better comprehension of newly implemented processes. By the end of this session, the audience will have enhanced knowledge of preventing patient identification errors and hands-on experience with the technologies to be used. Moreover, they will be educated on protocols for patient identification to avoid errors.

 Purpose and Goals of Patient Identification Safety Presentation

My aim for today’s presentation is to raise awareness among the healthcare workforce and administrative staff to prevent patient identification due to human errors and technological constraints. Additionally, the purpose of this session is to mitigate the risks associated with misidentification, which can lead to severe consequences such as medication errors, delays in care, incorrect treatments, and compromised patient safety (Rodziewicz & Hipskind, 2020). Our ultimate goal is to decrease the incidence of patient identification errors by 50% within one year. Additionally, the goal is to enhance the adherence to established patient identification protocols and procedures by 80% among healthcare and administrative staff. These goals are established by considering the SMART goal strategy, where goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound (Jeong et al., 2021).

Safety Improvement Plan

Overview of the Current Problem 

Currently, our healthcare organization has been tackling patient identification errors. Now, a root-cause analysis for one of these patient identification errors was performed due to the high emerging rates of this problem. The two patients, Julia and Jenny, came for vaccination, and their bracelet identifiers were replaced due to administrative errors. As a result, patients acquired the wrong vaccines, experienced adverse reactions, and increased susceptibility to diseases. The nurses also paid no heed to verifying patients before administering vaccines. The overall incident led the administrative team to delve into the root cause of the problem and create a plan to reduce these errors.

Proposed Plan

The proposed safety improvement plan includes implementing a barcode system, developing standardized protocols and checklists for double patient identification verification, and training staff, particularly the administrative and healthcare workforce. The barcode system will designate a barcode identifier for each patient and promote correct identification of the patient as the same barcode is assigned to the medication to be administered (Barakat & Franklin, 2020). This will reduce the onset of patient misidentification and enhance patient safety.

Additionally, the healthcare administration will develop standards or protocols for patient identification, such as double verification and following the five rights of medication administration, where identifying the right patient is mandatory (Romano et al., 2021). The training sessions for healthcare and administrative staff will be performed to educate all relevant and responsible members on patient safety and the need for patient identification. This safety improvement plan will effectively boost patient safety in our organization (Romano et al., 2021).

Need for Improving Safety by Avoiding Patient Identification Errors

There is a pressing need for integrating new processes to improve patient safety by reducing identification errors. One of the significant reasons is that patient identification errors contribute to a substantial threat to safety of patients. They can lead to onset of adverse events like medication errors, compromised care treatments, and increased healthcare costs (Rahmawati et al., 2020). An evidence-based study states that about 236 patient identification errors occurred on losing their bracelet identifier (Rahmawati et al., 2020). By p