What is Patient Safety?

According to World Health Organization (WHO) is “a health care discipline that

emerged with the evolving complexity in health care systems and the resulting rise
of patient harm in health care facilities. It aims to prevent and reduce risks, errors
and harm that occur to patients during provision of health care. A cornerstone of
the discipline is continuous improvement based on learning from errors and
adverse events.”

Patient safety is to get the quality health services. As it is a sensitive topic the
meaning of health services across the world… as it should be effective.

In addition, to realize the benefits of quality health care, health services must be
timely, equitable, integrated and efficient.

To ensure successful implementation of patient safety strategies; clear policies,

leadership capacity, data to drive safety improvements, skilled health care
professionals and effective involvement of patients in their care, are all needed.

Patient safety is not a new term in the medical field, but it is for the public, to be
observe the quality of care.

Medical Errors

Around 28,000 patients die form the medical errors in U.S. yearly which cost $2.3
billion annually.1

Between 15-25% of hospitalized patients receive urinary catheters during their

hospital stay, which raise the risk of factoring for developing the risk of die.2

1
AHRQ, n.d. CDC, 2011 Sagana & Hyzy, 2013
2
CDC, 2021Nicolle, 2014
So, what is the Medical Errors?

According to Patient Safety Movement it is "failure of a planned action to be

completed as intended or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim."

Most medical errors do not result in medical injury, although some do, and these
are termed preventable adverse events.

We cannot stop the errors which effect badly on patient safety, but with new
technology we can decrease the impact of it… as medical technology can help.

Related to the study published in 2020 “The impact of health information

technology on patient safety”

There are many new technologies used in public health to improve patient safety…

- Electronic physician’s orders and E-prescribing

Computerized physician order entry entails the use of electronic or computer

support to enter physician orders including medication orders using a computer or
mobile device platform.

CPOE as a system developed to improve the safety of medicine orders, but there is
another system must used to improve that safety which is clinical decision support
system (CDS).

The impact is around 95% to ensure the safety of patient, as some CPOE systems
could have the feature of prompting the prescriber to any patient allergies, drug-
drug or drug-lab interactions or with sophisticated systems. Which might prove the
safety. And can reduce the errors. But the study said the using of a stand-alone
CPOE without CDS does not seem to reduce medication errors.

- Clinical decision support

provides the health care professional with information and patient-specific

information. This information is to ensure the healthcare at appropriate times.

CDS includes tools to make the decision clear and workflow. Unfortunately, 33%
of alerts were ignored by the ordering physician, and the study didn’t show why!
 - Electronic sign-out and hand-off tools

Signing out or “hand-over” is kind of communication relates to a process patient-

specific information from one caregiver to another, form team to next level. Or
patient himself and his family. The purpose of this technology is ensuring patient
care and safety, but the evaluate of the outcomes form this one is not clear, there is
leak of information and low quality. Studies need in this field.

- Bar code medication administration

electronic systems that integrate electronic medication administration records with

bar code technology.

This kind of technology could reduce medication errors by give it to right patient
in right time.

The study shows it might reduce errors by 50% to 80%. But although the studies
need in this field to ensure the result in the future.

- Smart pumps

It is kind of smart devises of pump which equipped with medication error-

prevention software.

This software alerts when the setting is set outside of safety limit.

Smart pumps may reduce programming errors, but they don’t eliminate pacific
errors, in general it could decrease the errors and increase patient safety, but it
needs time to be insure for that.

- Automated medication dispensing technology

Automated dispensing cabinets (ADC) are electronic drug cabinets that store
medication at the point of care with controlled dispensing and tracking of
medication distribution.

And it is a good one, but the result still weak, 28% only.

And the level of the cost is high, however; the limitation for the care setting is not
clear.
 - Electronic incident reporting

It is a web-based system allows healthcare providers involved in safety events to

report the incidents. This kind of system could increase the patient safety by
reporting all the errors as we have leak information in the medical errors.

The conclusion

The paper is promising for the future, but it needs more studies in this field.

As there is many challenges form the resistant of physicians themselves to the

quality of technology in public health.

As the movements in Patients Safety are going in the right place, but the leak of
information is very serios issue.

Technologies in healthcare is trying to make life easier for the two parts the
patients and physicians, so the future will say many things as it is showing in other
fields.