Is Technology the Answer for Better Patient Safety or is it People?
Thanks to the amount of adverse incidents that take place in hospitals and other healthcare facilities these days, a topic that is on the forefront of many peoples minds is that of patient safety. Although there are numerous technology-based safeguards that have been put in place, an important question has arisen of whether that is the only answer, or whether people have just as important of a role to play in this regard as well.
Human Input Required
Many doctors and nurses are turning to devices such as the Apple Watch and their smart phones in a bid to help them better manage the patients in their care. This can be extremely convenient in that patients health conditions and long term care can be monitored without them even having to be present in a doctors consulting rooms. Regardless of the type of technology that is implemented in a bid to help promote patient safety though, some form of human intervention will always be required in order to ensure that these technological devices function as they are supposed to, be it in the form of programming them or simply replacing their batteries from time to time.
Changing the Mindset of Hospital Employees
Although technology certainly does play an important part in patient safety these days, one of the most important components of a hospital that has safe and happy patients is the overall mindset of hospital employees. All employees need to realize that they will need to be willing to play a part in ensuring that they do everything possible to ensure the safety of the patients who are in their care. Double-checking and in some cases even triple-checking all patient data pertaining to treatments and prescriptions will go a long way in helping to prevent the occurrence of any adverse incidents.
Getting on Board with Patient Safety
One of the best ways to help keep the safety levels of patients as high as possible is to ensure that an effective line of communication exists between both hospital and administration employees. In the event that an adverse situation takes place, it will go a long way in helping to minimize any potential long term effects that may arise as a result thereof. When implementing new patient safety measures in a healthcare facility, it is also crucial for admin employees to ensure that they obtain as much input as possible from all appropriate hospital employees such as doctors and nurses. This will enable measures to be implemented that are as practical as possible.
A hospital or other healthcare facility can implement the use of every available form of technology in its bid to promote patient safety; however, in order to ensure the highest possible levels of patients safety, all hospital employees will need to actually work in conjunction with technology instead of expecting these devices to perform all of the tasks that they are in fact responsible for each day.