Clearly, it is essential for all healthcare providers to improve the safety of the environment in which patient care is delivered. Accrediting bodies and national organizations such as The Joint Commission and the Institute of Medicine have conducted research, published reports, and issued mandates regarding safety measures that should, and must, be implemented (Wei, Sewell, Woody, & Rose, 2018). However, how much is the average healthcare professional aware of such research and the rationale behind mandates and recommendations? The healthcare setting I am currently practicing in has a Hospital Safety Committee. It is a multidisciplinary group that is responsible for analyzing and reviewing the NPSGs. The committee is comprised of nurses, physicians, pharmacists, medical assistants, risk managers, and office managers. All members of the healthcare team are involved in the implementation of safety and quality initiatives. There are ten committee members. The meetings are quarterly. The focus of our most recent meeting was to conduct a review of the published NPSGs. This was an opportunity to identify and design actions that must be implemented to ensure patient (and staff) safety. The last initiative that the team developed was a model to help improve the tools we use regarding identifying patients correctly. This seems like a very rudimentary initiative. However, the healthcare setting I’m practicing in has six patients who are named, Maria Rivera. Two of these patients have the same date of birth. Unfortunately, approximately one week ago, there was an issue where two of the patients who have the same first and last name had appointments on the same day, at the same time, and with two different providers. The wrong information ended up in the wrong charts regarding these two patients. Fortunately, this issue was resolved once the providers entered the rooms and noticed they did not recognize the patients. We had an immediate meeting that evening to ensure the issue did not happen again. We again reviewed and updated the policy we have on the protocols for identifying patients correctly. We use at least two ways to identify the patients. For example, we use the patient’s name and date of birth for identification. However, we added that all our patients who require an interpreter must have the information reviewed twice during their visit. The first time is upon admission . The information must be verified again while making the follow up visit for the patients. Due to the fact that the practice setting has multiple patients with the same last name and dates of birth, patient identification has been identified as the most appropriate program for our practice setting to focus on presently. Although we have a safety initiative developed for patient identification, it remains a work in progress. Clearly, it still needs to be developed and improved upon. Please respond and use APA 7th edition and peer journal articles from 2015 and greater.
