Patient Safety Awareness Week – March 13 – 19, 2022
Patient Safety Awareness Week serves as a dedicated time and platform for growing awareness about patient safety and recognizing the work already being done and the work that is still needed.
The World Health Organization estimates that 134 million adverse events occur each year due to unsafe care in hospitals in low- and middle-income countries, resulting in some 2.6 million deaths. Additionally, approximately 40 percent of patients experience harm in ambulatory and primary care settings with an estimated 80 percent of these harms being preventable, according to WHO.
Recent studies of medical errors have estimated errors may account for as many as 251,000 deaths annually in the United States (U.S)., making medical errors the third leading cause of death. Not every case of harm results in death, yet these errors can cause long-term impact on the patient’s physical health, emotional health, financial well-being, or family relationships.
ECRI recently published their top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for 2022. They are:
- Staffing shortages
- COVID-19 effects on healthcare workers’ mental health
- Bias and racism in addressing patient safety
- Cognitive biases and diagnostic error
- Nonventilator healthcare-associated pneumonia
- Human factors in operationalizing telehealth
- International supply chain disruptions
- Products subject to emergency use authorization
- Telemetry monitoring
According to ECRI:
“For the items on this year’s list, healthcare organizations may already have implemented measures to improve safety. Yet harm continues to occur. To address these safety concerns, healthcare organizations and their partners may need to reach farther. The items on this year’s list may require more collaboration with community partners, more involvement across stakeholder groups, more interdepartmental planning, and processes. For each, this report offers multifactorial recommendations to help organizations achieve total systems safety.”
Safety concerns must be addressed, solutions found, policies and procedures created and implemented, and staff education provided. MCN Healthcare’s mission is focused on safe, quality patient care through policy and procedure management. We invite you to take a look at how the MCN Solution can help your healthcare organization.
MCN HEALTHCARE
Regulatory Compliance Solutions for Healthcare Organizations,
Including Policy Management Software, Policy Library Templates,
StayAlert! – Regulatory Alert System, and Learning Management System