Identifying 6 Patient Safety Goals and Solutions for 2024
8/19/2024
When healthcare providers seek to improve patient safety in hospitals, urgent care centers, and other such facilities, it's essential they identify the specific hot spots and then define potential solutions for each. That's the purpose of the National Patient Safety Goals® (NPSG), published by The Joint Commission and updated annually.
The Commission’s goals are regularly revised based on their impact, cost, and effectiveness. In addition, regardless of the care area, several of the themes are consistent, including:
- Patient identification accuracy
- Caregiver communication
- Medication safety
- Clinical alarm systems
- Infection prevention
- Surgery verification
- Identify patient safety risks
- Improve healthcare equity
As important as these goals are as a starting point, however, improving patient safety requires a system-wide commitment — and a continuous improvement mindset.
6 patient safety goals, solutions
Here, we’ll take a detailed look at six of the National Patient Safety Goals noted in this year’s report, and address possible solutions for each.
Correctly identify patients — Patient identification mistakes can lead to errors in a variety of areas, including: medication administration; failure to treat a serious illness or disease; medical treatment for erroneous diagnostic lab results; procedures performed on the wrong patient; and others. Using two forms of identification is critical to ensuring patients get the correct medication and treatments. Because patients often identify themselves by their middle name (or a nickname) rather than the name on their patient record, both forms of identification should include the patient’s full name, date of birth, and/or medical identification (ID) number. Admission labels and wristbands are the first step in patient identification and the foundation of patient safety in hospitals — they provide positive patient identification and communicate important information to the medical staff including allergies, fall risk, and other medical alerts.
Improve staff communication — Most healthcare staffs are inundated with information from various sources. In fact, many say it's too much information. While necessary protocols must be followed, reducing the number of communication channels can help achieve an essential goal: getting important test results to the right person in a timely manner. Communication labels can capture and convey important results for quick action — they plainly impart information and ensure a better understanding of processes.
Use medicines safely — The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reports that nearly 5% of hospitalized patients experience an adverse drug event (ADE), making them one of the most common types of inpatient errors. Medicines not conventionally labeled are common culprits, including medicines in syringes, cups, and basins. If medications or other solutions remain unlabeled, they’re unidentifiable — which can result in errors, sometimes tragic. Unlabeled containers that look alike, drug names that sound alike, and illegible handwriting can create medication-dispensing challenges. For prepared medications, labels allow the medical staff to record key data points, such as drug name, strength, and more, aiding in proper dispensing. Labels can also highlight medications that have been added to IVs, helping to prevent dispensing errors and overdosing.
Use alarms safely — The numerous alarm signals in patient care areas often result in noise as well as displayed information that can cause an overall desensitization to alerts. The unfortunate outcome: The staff may miss, ignore, or even disable alarm signals. Other challenges include too many devices with alarms, default settings that are not at an actionable level, and alarm limits that are too narrow. Although there are no universal solutions, developing a systematic, coordinated approach to clinical alarm system management is a good starting point. Having defined an approach, ensuring the alarms are actually in working order is also essential. Biomedical clinical engineering labels can help health systems track and communicate important safety, maintenance, calibration, and inspection information to ensure that alarms will sound when needed.
Prevent infection — A JAMA Internal Medicine research study found that although hand hygiene compliance reached more than 90% during the peak of the Covid pandemic, in just over a year many healthcare workers regressed to previous habits. Overall compliance dropped back to 2019 levels, averaging just 50% across hospitals nationwide, the study found. Yet, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hand hygiene is the simplest approach to preventing the spread of infections. Electronic monitors and observation tools can lead to higher levels of compliance. Plus, placing infection control signs and labels in high-traffic areas can inform and guide staff, patients, and visitors to take appropriate precautions.
Surgery verification — General anesthesia (or deep sedation) is necessary for most major operations. And although these procedures aren't possible without it, it can also place patients at risk. That's why it's essential to use multiple, complementary strategies to ensure the correct procedure is conducted on the correct person, at the correct site. Utilizing a pre-procedure verification process ensures that all relevant documents and related information or equipment are correctly identified, labeled, and matched to the patient’s identifiers prior to beginning the procedure. This includes reviewing the procedure and site with the patient and care team to verify accuracy. A standardized protocol is most effective in achieving patient safety, and checklists — implemented on a consistent basis — can play a crucial role here.
The ongoing challenge of patient safety
The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals are geared toward helping bring attention to patient safety challenges throughout the entire spectrum of care. These are the 2024 patient safety goals for each care area:
Consistently executing effective patient safety remains an ongoing challenge for all healthcare operations. In addition to internal systems, medical devices, and the diligence of the clinical staff being deployed, using tactics like those described above can help to improve patient safety across the scope of your operation.
The information presented in this blog was originally published by RRD’s United Ad Label, which develops products that aid and enhance patient safety processes in health systems, hospitals, clinics, physician offices, nursing homes, and more. RRD United Ad Label can create a label that meets a customer’s exact needs and brings awareness to the Joint Commission's patient safety goals.