Monitor competency with education
Monitor competency with education
Here are tips to reduce medical errors
(Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on improving patient safety. In last month’s issue, we addressed the new emphasis from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, professional associations, and government groups. We also told you about new guidelines on correct site surgery. This month, we give you tips on how to use documentation and education to reduce medical errors.)
To reduce medical errors, provide free on-site clinical education, suggests Claire C. Yoder, BSN, JD, consultant and partner for Vanot Consulting, Risk Management Services in Highland Village, TX. Yoder spoke at the recent meeting of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses on the topic, Medical Errors: System Solutions for Ambulatory Care.
Education is a way of involving people in their work more seriously, because same-day surgery "is more serious work than putting out widgets in a factor, frankly," Yoder says. Physicians and nurses should study the same topics so they can work together better as a team, she says. "To leave a physician free to take a [continuing medical education course] on something that doesn’t affect his or her everyday practice doesn’t give you a good idea of their competency," Yoder adds.
Orientation should put more emphasis on risk factors for patients, she advises. "It can be alarming and frightening, but someone once said, Fear works,’" Yoder says. Include statistics, she adds. For current staff, hold "what-if" workshops that allow staff to practice clinical disasters, such as a sudden drop in blood pressure with no backup. "They need more contingency training," Yoder says. "There’s no reason in the world they shouldn’t be prepared for anything that could happen."
Education is particularly important when it comes to new procedures and technologies, which are frequent in outpatient surgery, explains Lee Swanstrom, MD, clinical professor of surgery at Oregon Health Sciences University and director of the department of minimally invasive surgery at Legacy Health System, both in Portland.
Before staff at Legacy Health System perform a new procedure or use a new technology, the physicians and nurses do some "practice runs" in a laboratory to ensure the team is working well together and being safe. The credentialing criteria require that physicians must be proctored for the first three cases.
Include nurses in the entire education process, Swanstrom emphasizes. "They’re key in learning a new procedures," he says. "If they’re dropped into a new process and they don’t know what’s going on, it’s potentially dangerous for a patient."
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