Patient safety important issue in healthcare

Patient safety means that the care personnel and different kinds of healthcare units within the field have agreed upon certain principles and procedures when taking care and treating the patients. The basic idea of patient safety is the same what patient herself, relatives and the care personnel usually wish for; that no matter how sick or injured the patient is, the treatment shouldn't do any added harm to the patient. Failures and neglecting of the patient safety can lead to malpractices in treatment and can be even life threatening for the patients.

The main components of the functioning patient safety practices are medical safety, safety of the treatments and correct functioning of the medical devices and equipment. If the equipment doesn’t work, for example safety alarm fail to alarm or EGK equipment fails to work, the consequences can be serious and the safety of the patient can be under threat. Overmedication relates to medical safety, and wrong kind of combination of medicines can lead to life threatening symptoms. Right kind of treatment begins with the correct diagnosis and appropriate solution.

According to researches maltreatments happen approximately in 10 percent of the hospital visits globally. The figure shows how important it is to more and more pay attention to the patient safety and to pressure governments to give stricter regulations on hospital safety and treatment of the patients. Maltreatments will create costs as well, and it is estimated that about 2-5 percent of the expenditure of the average size healthcare unit goes to substituting and countering maltreatments.

In the past the blame in the case of maltreatment and consequent injury or death of a patient was usually put on individual caretakers while these days the reasons for maltreatments are searched within the whole hospital organization and are seen to lie in the whole structure and working culture of a healthcare unit.

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