How to Protect Patients from Adverse Effects of Healthcare Services
Healthcare services are vital to patients visiting health facilities. Patients are entitled to accessible and affordable services at any given time. The health care provider should ensure that patients access the health services they need and protect them from adverse effects of healthcare services. In fact, healthcare providers should ensure that there are no cases of the cross and nosocomial infections through contaminated equipment and other hospital health care facilities.
Embracing the patient’s safety is the first way of ensuring safe care, reducing the harm that medical errors may cause. Healthcare providers should ensure that they eliminate any medical errors which are likely to occur while providing services to the patient. In addition, it is their responsibility to ensure that the patients receive the right drugs and the correct route of administration is observed. Using the right diluent for any drugs and proper dosage to the patient creates a fundamental scope for the healthcare providers.
Healthcare providers should also check on drug expiry dates to avoid administering expired drugs. Patients need to be treated using scientific evidence from medical laboratories, which should be accurate rather than treating the signs and symptoms (Auerbach et al., 2014). Therefore, ensuring that the cause of the disease is identified and treated to avoid re-infection. Finally, health care waste should be segregated at the point of production for safe and easy disposal.
Severely sick patients should be attended first to prevent worsening of their condition as they wait in a doctor’s office or emergency rooms. However, health care providers should encourage patients to seek medical services in time. Effective communication and coordination are essential for health care providers, patients, and relatives in providing safe patient care (Child & Institute of Medicine, 2004). In essence, healthcare providers should provide quality and equal health care services to all patients despite race or ethnicity.
References
Auerbach, D. I., Heaton, P., Brantley, I., & Institute for Civil Justice (U.S.). (2014). How will the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act affect liability insurance costs?. Washington DC: Rand Corporation.
Child, A. P., & Institute of Medicine (U.S.). (2004). Keeping patients safe: Transforming the work environment of nurses. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press.
