Answer

Introduction

Healthcare provision has been viewed as an act of humanity for a long time. It is the responsibility of every healthcare worker to ensure they provide quality, safe, and appropriate care to all patients. Healthcare provision must be provided with accordance to the society’s expectations and norms. However, medical errors are cropping healthcare issues that must be managed properly to ascertain the provision of quality care. Medication errors occur at prescription, procedural, or data documentation stage. Strategies such as wristband identification, ensuring voluntary reporting of medical errors, and root analysis are indispensable in preventing medical errors. This paper is purposely documented to evaluate the influence of organizational structure and governance, culture, and social responsibility focus on the occurrence of medical errors. Subsequently, the paper recommends the organizational changes to curb future medical errors.

Medical Errors

Medical errors are among the currently most prevalent issues affecting healthcare delivery system. In the United States alone, hospital medical errors account for as high as 400, 000 deaths annually (James, 2013). Similarly, the preventable medical errors rank the third leading cause of death after cardiovascular diseases and cancer (James, 2013). Medical errors are human mistakes or systemic defects in healthcare that lead to inappropriate decisions of the method of patient care or inaccurate execution of an appropriate care plan (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). Medical errors have occurred in several instances during healthcare provision. Some errors are committed by healthcare providers while other errors occur from the defaults in healthcare equipment (s) Healthcare Information Systems. Most errors occur at the diagnosis stage while there are also operative, drug-related, and procedure-related medical errors. Medical errors are expensive both at the healthcare facility level and at the national level. Medical errors cost the United States approximately $ 19.5 billion in 2008 (James, 2013). Furthermore, 10, 000 serious complications emanate from medical errors daily. Administration of wrong drugs to patients and practicing of polypharmacy that leads to negative interaction of drugs are common medical errors. Other errors include surgical incisions in incorrect sites, inaccurate blood typing during transfusions, failure to remove surgical equipment (s), and inaccurate record-keeping (James, 2013). Medical errors extend to affect health insurance companies because the expected cost of healthcare services shoot up in the event of error occurrence. Consequently, Medicare requires files of medical errors before the insurer pay hospital bill (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). Medical errors are also costly to healthcare providers due to the expenses incurred in settling malpractice claims. Therefore, medical errors are rising and these medical flaws that must be alleviated.

The occurrence of medical errors in healthcare facilities is influenced by the interplay of several factors. These factors include; the structure and governance of healthcare unit, culture, and social responsibility. Organizational structure and governance immensely affect the occurrence of medical errors. Poor coordination of care and lack of communication between healthcare team members can lead to segmented care plans (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). As such, current care might not consider the previous indications for the same patient. Therefore, organizational management should have appropriate leadership skills to monitor its staff. Inadequate staffing and supervision can also lead to medical errors. Inadequate staffing would translate into an increased workload per healthcare provider. Therefore, the few healthcare professionals would provide care under pressure and likely with a considerable level of errors. Unsupervised staffs make medical errors due to lack of follow-ups (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). Furthermore, inadequate staffing also leads to delayed treatments. Reliance on automated systems to prevent errors contributes to medical errors especially when such systems become faulty (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). Hospitals, clinics, and nursing should embrace an organizational culture that stipulates policies and procedures that intend to commit care to maintaining patient safety. Medical errors occur due to poor organizational cultures that devalue patient safety. Such cultures also have a poor orientation of new staff members and modes of transfer of knowledge and employ incompetent staff. Employees are likely to use medical equipment (s) inappropriately when they are not orientated. 

Working hours of healthcare providers is an important determinant. Employees who overwork due to long working hour’s requirements burn out and make medical errors easily due to fatigue and sleep deprivation. Medical errors are also influenced by both social and personal responsibility. Healthcare providers who do not have transparent behaviors are likely to leave their medical errors unreported (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). Consequently, a vicious cycle of medical errors would be created. All healthcare providers must accept accountability to mitigate medical errors. Socially responsible staff would be quick to admit mistakes. Therefore, medical errors would be frequently reported, investigated, and the adverse events effectively managed. The social responsibility of the organization also influences the occurrence of medical errors. Healthcare facilities have a responsibility to compensating patients harmed by the medical errors. The responsibility to compensate patients is an incentive to practice sufficient patient safety to cut on the costs of compensation.

There is an array of medical resources that can be allocated to prevent future occurrences of medical errors. Communication tools such as the SBAR handout would be important in conveying information about a patient from one caregiver to the next (James, 2013). Documentation books would be required that are used to list all the medications the patient had received in the course of treatment. Printed prescriptions would be indispensable in preventing errors due to illegible handwritings. As such, every clinician would acquire computers to give prescriptions using computerized prescriber order entry (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). Such digital prescriptions would prevent mismatches between patients and prescribed doses. Identification of patients is important in medical error prevention. Hospitalized patients would need wristbands with their names for identification. The wristbands would ensure that right drugs are given to right persons at the right time. The identification bands would also be used for surgical sites. Surgical site markers would be important to avoid medical errors due to surgical operations on wrong sites (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). Site-marking of the surgery rooms would also be important to limit errors due to unauthorized movements into surgery rooms.

Lastly, wall clocks would be important time indicators. It is evident that medical errors such as closely spaced doses and wrong time of medication occur due to inappropriate time-keeping. Therefore, wall clocks would be placed in every ward, operation, and treatment room to limit time inaccuracies. This initiative would ensure all doses are taken at the stipulated correct time. Patients’ charts that would be used have automatic ethics approval and not require individual informed consent. Another ethical consideration would be confidentiality breach Posted by digital information because the computer system can be hacked or accessed. However, use of passwords would save the situation.

There are several changes that must be implemented in the healthcare organization to prevent future occurrence of medical errors. Effective solutions are preferred to cheap inefficient strategies (Kovach, Revere, & Black, 2013). The structure of the organization, its culture, governance, and focus on social responsibility should be amended accordingly. Communication between all the staff members should enable information about the patient to reach all healthcare team members. The healthcare provision must be structured and accountability as well as well as the delegated duties should be distributed from the leaders to the healthcare providers. The care must be properly coordinated, and all patients must give informed consent before any medical intervention is done to them (James, 2013). Additionally, the hospital should be frequently reviewed by specialist practitioners to accredit its healthcare provision. The leadership of the hospital should ensure progressive surveillance of healthcare workers to ensure that they perform patient care according to the standards stipulated in the hospital care policy. This surveillance would require supervisors who should be healthcare experts to regulate on healthcare turpitudes perpetuated by healthcare workers.

The leadership should also motivate employees to use patient safety policies through education forums and direct contacts with the healthcare professionals (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). It would also be prudent of the hospital leadership to change the working culture to a culture that focuses on the safety of patients. The social responsibility of the hospital and each employee should also be improved by motivational strategies by the management. It should be an initiative of every healthcare provider to report medical errors voluntarily and commence investigative approaches to medical errors (Feijter, Grave, Muijtjens, Scherpbier, & Koopmans, 2012). Healthcare workers should also seek and embrace opinions of second practitioners on crucial details such as correct surgical sites and medication. The hospital can also attach reminders on noticeboards and in the walls in wards that encourage healthcare providers to improve patient safety and medication adherence.

Conclusion

In summary, medical errors are a threat to the provision of quality patient care. They cause more deaths than when no medical intervention is made at all. Medical errors can occur at the prescription medication stage, surgery, blood grouping, or medical record documentation stages. Medical errors require initiatives at a personal level. Thus, these errors present the need for sincere social responsibility among healthcare providers. Poor communication between healthcare providers is a chief determinant of medical errors. As such, healthcare provision must be well coordinated to ensure quality and patient safety. Healthcare workers must also be adequately trained and competent before they commence giving patient care. An additional requirement for orientation of new healthcare providers is essential in ensuring competency in using hospital gadgets. Patients must be accurately identified using wristbands to prevent administration of drugs to wrong patients. Medical errors can distort the public image of institutions by frequent malpractice complaints. Therefore, the organizational leadership must use supervision techniques to ensure the activities of healthcare providers are properly checked. Most importantly, all healthcare workers must be willing and able to report the occurrence of medical errors voluntarily.