1.1 patient safety and quality Flashcards
1
Q
why have quality and safety become so important?
A
- evidence patients being harmed
- variations in healthcare (also indicates that care is not optimal)
- direct cost and legal/insurance bill to NHS
- gov policies that have demanded change
2
Q
how can we define healthcare quality in terms of categories?
A
safe effective patient centred timely efficient equitable
3
Q
what is equity?
A
everyone with the same needs gets the same care
4
Q
what mechanisms are used to improve care quality?
A
- standard setting e.g NICE quality standards
- use commissioning to drive improvement
- use of financial incentives
- emphasis on disclosing information
- regulation and inspection by care quality commission
- clinical audit
- feedback from patients
- revalidation of doctors every 5 yrs
5
Q
what is an adverse event and a preventable adverse event?
A
adverse event
- an injury that is caused by medical management and prolongs hospitalisation, produces a disability or both
preventable adverse event
- an adverse event that could be prevented given the current state of medical knowledge
6
Q
whats an unavoidable adverse event?
A
a drug reaction that occurs in a patient prescribed the drug for the first time is an adverse event, but may be unavoidable
7
Q
what adverse events are preventable? give some examples
A
- operations performed on the wrong part of the body
- retained objects
- wrong dose/medication given
- failure to rescue
- some infections e.g via central line
