How to Improve Patient Safety at Surgical Centers

With new medical technologies evolving every year, it is more important than ever to keep your patients’ safety in mind, no matter how reliable something is. In fact, over 1,000 people will die because of a hospital error that was fully preventable. Every year, one out of every 25 people will also develop a preventable infection while in a hospital. From human error to technology malfunctions, there are many inevitable factors that could put your patients safety at risk.

While certain errors are going to occur, it is how well you prepare for them that will ensure your patients are always safe and sound. Patients need to know they are under great care. Communicating well with them and being educated on the procedure you will be performing are also crucial to keeping them safe, calm, and in a good head space before, during, and after the procedure.

There are many ways to improve safety and avoid errors in surgical centers. Today, we will be discussing five so you can improve the quality of care your patients receive.. 

Surgical center safety ranges from optimizing ambulatory care services, to recognizing and recording errors so they can be avoided in the future. No matter what kind of safety is being dealt with, there are always ways to improve it. Here’s how:

Understanding not only your patient’s medical history, but also their preferred environment, preferences, or fears can aid you in catering their surgical experience to best fit their needs. Many patients are nervous for long procedures and operations done to their bodies. Understanding how they react to certain questions and topics will also allow you to avoid any unknown intolerances or fears, thus improving their safety and overall experience. This can also lead to additional gleaned information, such as any allergies your patient may have forgotten to disclose that can lead to unexpected reactions during the procedure.

Running a surgical center with zero errors is close to impossible. Like we covered earlier, there are countless errors that occur in hospitals, but it is how you handle them that ensures the safety of the patient is always in the best hands. Mistakes may be inevitable, but you need to make sure they are fixed immediately. Recording all errors in detail will ensure your team can analyze them and find better ways to prevent them in the future, as well as set up protocols that counter them when they do. Because examples of errors can range from missing a tool in the surgical room, to something more extreme like a forgotten instrument in a patient, recording and monitoring them is important to make sure they never happen again.

The easiest steps are often the ones operating room technician professionals rush through. Unfortunately, this can lead to mistakes and the consequences that ensue. Be sure to take each step as the most important part so everything runs smoothly and efficiently. Some outcomes that occur when professionals rush through basic steps include injury to the patient, bad reactions, future problems to the patient, and even death. Make sure your patients are getting the greatest care possible by taking your time.

With the rise of digital technology in the past couple of years and even more in the upcoming future, it is critical to consistently check and ensure your software and technology is up-to-date. This is especially true in today’s day and age, a time when new technologies and innovations are rapidly coming to the surface. For example, software that is not updated may not operate correctly if the latest update isn’t installed, inevitably bringing you to a problem-prone situation. Small updates could be the small change needed to change your patients safety from good to great.

Imagine being asked to perform a high intensity operation on a patient in a messy, unorganized room full of tools you may or may not need. Having a clean workspace ensures that you are not going to be using any of the incorrect tools that could harm the patient, or worse, any previously used or dirty tools. 

To ameliorate this, certain organizations can reprocess your surgical instruments so they are safe for use in surgery, effectively eliminating the odds of a nosocomial infection taking effect. Reprocessing is essentially deeply cleaning, disinfection and sterilization of surgical instruments so they can be used again on a different patient. This process ensures the tools are not used until the reprocessing has occurred and the tools are back in their proper place.

Surgical patient safety will always be a high priority. With more and more technology-driven medical devices and innovations entering the market, patient safety is quickly reaching a point in which surgeries will be in the “hands” of robots instead of humans. For instance, a huge upgrade to surgery we are seeing more of in recent days is robotic assisted surgeries in which human physicians are supplemented with robotic technology that gives them increased precision and consistency. 

Until all surgeries are covered by machines that are less prone to error than humans, it is best to keep everything we covered today in mind so your patients’ safety is never compromised.

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