National Patient Safety Goals

The National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) program was created in 2002 by the Joint Commission to help organizations identify and address issues with patient safety. The people who determine what the safety goals are and how they should be addressed is called the Patient Safety Advisory Group. This group is composed of medical professionals who have “hands-on experience in addressing patient safety issues in a wide variety of health care settings.”(The Joint Commission, 2015) The first group of goals set by the advisory group were published Jan. 1, 2003. Currently, there are 6 hospital patient safety goals:

Goal three by the National Patient Safety Goal for 2014 is to use medicines safely. Many errors occur regularly with medications which is why communication is so important with the doctors, nurses and patients. One process that Joint Commission requires in accredited HCO’s is medication reconciliation “creating the most accurate list possible off all medications a patient is taking, including drug name, dosage, frequency, and route, and comparing that list against the physician’s admission, transfer, and/or discharge orders with the goal of providing correct medications to the patients at all transition points within the hospital (Finkelman & Kenner, 2012, p. 388)”. Ensuring medication reconciliation to the patient, health providers and any new consults that are

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA 2009), the wrong route of administrating medication accounts for 1.3 million injuries each year. An article published in September issue of the Journal of Patient Safety estimates there are between 210,000 and 400,000 deaths per year associated with medical errors. This makes medical errors the third leading cause of deaths in the United States, behind that comes heart disease and cancer. To prevent medical errors always follow the Three Checks and most importantly the Rights of Medication Administration. The “Rights of Medication Administration” helps to ensure accuracy when administering medication to a patient. When administering medication the administer should ensure they have the Right Medication, Right Patient, Right Dosage, Right Route, Right Time, Right Route, Right Reason, and Right Documentation. Also remember the patient has the right to refuse, assess patient for pain, and always assess the patient for signs of effects.

National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs), established in 2002 by the Joint Commission, is to help accredited organizations address specific areas of concern in regard to patient safety ("Catheter-Associated," 2015). NPSG.07.06.01 Implement evidence-based practices to prevent indwelling catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) is a 2015 NPSG ("The Joint Commission," 2015). Our facility has 1.32 CAUTIs per 1000 device days (Carson, 2015). Decreasing CAUTIs can be achieved with a strict goal, addressing the financial implications, interdisciplinary collaboration, nursing leadership, a measurement tool, and discussing the future healthcare delivery methods.

rights, health, and safety of the patient.” This provision, identifying patients, medication safety are related because it is a nurse’s responsibility to protect the patient from harm and promote safety. Nurses are taught to use multiple checks before administering a drug and use two identifiers. These checks include checking the medication against the order when obtaining it, checking again when preparing the medication and the last check is done at the patient’s bedside prior to giving the medication. Also it is imperative to question any medication order that does not seem fit. The order should include a date, time, name of the medication, dosage strength, the route for

The National Patient Safety Goals were first developed in 2002 by the Joint Commission. The goals are established to help guide medical organizations to focus on which areas of patient safety need improving (Hudson 2016). The first set of goals were released and put in motion in 2003, prior to 2003 there were no policies or goals for an organization to set their sights on (Hudson 2016 page 2). A panel of experts advises the Joint Commission on the development of new goals or the updating of old ones. The panel is called the Patient Safety Advisory Group and is made up of nurses, risk managers, clinical engineers, and physicians (Hudson 2016). The National Patient Safety Goals have specific goals geared toward the type of medical organizations such as a critical access hospital, home care, behavioral health, and long term care services to name a few (Hudson 2016 page 2). The National Patient Safety Goals help protect patients and make sure providers are practicing safely across the board.

Also to give medication respecting the person’s dignity and choice, to only give authorised medication from a labelled container, to give the medication according to the training received. Also to help to inform and educate the person about their medicine should they wish to know, to be aware of common side effects. It’s also important to record episodes of care accurately, also to report any problems to the manager.

The Joint Commission is a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving the Healthcare system. They do this by regulating and evaluating health care organizations, helping them improve and give a more effective and safe care (The Joint Commission, 2012). The National Patient safety goals are ways in which the joint commission strives to improve the way health care is provided (The Joint Commission, 2012). Effective on January 1, 2012, the Joint commission came up with new ways to improve the Care of Medicare Based Long term Care facilities and provided Safety regulations to be followed. In order to better understand the impact that this regulations

The nurse must verify the physician’s medication order, including the dose and time, and then the pharmacy is responsible for their own checks and balances via the BCMA system in order to complete the dispensing phase of the medication (Gooder, 2011). The nurse enters the BCMA system with a login and password and is able then to see a list of the virtual due list for a specific patient. The computer on wheels is then taken to that patient’s room and the five rights of medication administration begin. As nurses, we are taught to use the five rights of drug administration are (1) right patient (2) right medication (3) right dose (4) right route and (5) right time. By scanning the barcode on the patient’s hospital identification band, the nurse then asks for the patient to verbally state their name and date of birth, which can be verified by the nurse on the virtual due list and then choses the medication that are due for administration at that time. The medication is dispensed and the nurse is able to scan the barcode on the medication, the scanning triggers the automatic documentation of the medication given (Kelly, 2012).

Back in 2003, the Joint Commission created a National Patient Safety Goal due to 23 occurrences of death or injury to a patient where alarms had been applied incorrectly or the alarms had been muted (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). By 2004, Joint Commission had removed it from their National Patient Safety Goal list and made it a requirement for Joint Commission accreditations (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). In 2013, it was brought to the attention of the Joint Commission regarding many alarm-related events, including multiple deaths, permanent loss of function, and prolonged hospital stays due to health care worker’s decreased response times to alarms (Horkan, 2014; Joint Commission, 2013). The Joint Commission reinstated a National Patient Safety Goal in 2013 and had requirements for all hospitals that had to be met by July 1, 2014 (Joint Commission, 2013). These goals included being able to make alarm safety a priority and develop a plan to decrease the amount of alarms. This plan could include preventing unnecessary patient monitoring, clarifying who is allowed to monitor and silence alarms, setting the cardiac monitors to have multiple tones, and having a brief delay in the alarm to see if the patient can self-resolve. The second phase of the Joint Commission’s plan was to be implemented by January 2016, to where the hospital must have followed through with their designated plan (Joint Commission, 2013).

In 2003, The Joint Commission made one of their first goals to improve the accuracy of identifying patients to reduce or eliminate patient identification errors. This continues to be an accreditation requirement. Their recommendations to do this are to use at least two patient identifiers when administering medications, and when providing treatments or procedures. Acceptable identifiers may be the individual’s name, an assigned identification number, telephone number, or other person-specific identifier. Patient room number or physical location may not be used as an appropriate identifier. Healthcare provides should re-identify the patient with each encounter, each medication pass, and each procedure. There have been procedures and protocols throughout the country have been put into place to make the care provided to patients safer. Another element of this requirement is that all containers should be labeled in the patients presences after using the patient identifiers

This paper, will discuss the National Patient Safety Goal NPSG 0.7.06.01 entitled “ Use proven guidelines to prevent infection of the urinary tract that are caused by catheter” (The Joint Commission, 2015). It will identify reasons why this National Patient Safety Goal was chosen as well as the type of organizations that utilize urinary catheters. It will look into financial implications of implementing educational process versus the hospital cost of Catheter-Associated Urinary Infections (CAUTI). The Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) will demonstrate method on how to gather data, design educational tool, implement standard practice and create a committee by collaborating with other health care discipline. Effectiveness of the educational process will be evaluated through data collection. Finally, future health care delivery implications will be explored.

Example: Identify patients correctly: NPSG.01.01.01-Use at least two ways to identify patients. For example, use the patient’s name and date of birth. This is done to make sure that each patient gets the correct medicine and treatment

The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority is a state agency founded by the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) on 2002. Moreover, the agency creates the greatest database system for patient safety which known as Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System PA-PSRS. The system was developed by contract with Pennsylvania-based independent, ECRI, in partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a non-profit health services research agency, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), a Pennsylvania-based, non-profit health research organization and also a leading international information technology firm. Statewide compulsory for using PA-PSRS to report serious events in hospital, ambulatory surgical facilities and

After the Pharmacy technicians checks the solution for exactness, and may convey it to the patient. The expert then duplicates the data about the endorsed pharmaceutical onto the patient's profile. Specialists likewise may amass a 24-hour supply of medication for each patient. They bundle and mark every measurement independently. The bundles are then set in the drug cupboards of patients until the administering pharmacist checks them for precision, and at exactly that point is the prescription given to the patients.