Integration of multiple methods in identifying patient safety risks

Abstract

There is a growing awareness that risk identification plays an important role in the investigation of actual and potential harm to patients. Although current risk identification methods in healthcare have strengths and limitations, it is an open question whether they have been implemented optimally and how well they have been integrated to provide a complete picture of risk within complex healthcare systems. To shed light on this, this paper reviews the characteristics of reactive and proactive risk identification methods along with their implication on risk identification practices.Various learning points from other safety-critical industries are identified and integration of multiple methods are discussed to provide a more comprehensive view within the scope of risk management. As a particular example, this paper reviews a prognostic method, developed by the Future Aviation Safety Team (FAST), to enhance existing risk identification in the aviation industry by identifying risks that arise due to future changes. The FAST method also demonstrates integration of risk identification methods proposing four complementary approaches for use in the aviation industry.Similarly, our study provides a conceptual framework that can be used in healthcare to integrate multiple methods to accelerate patient safety improvement through comprehensive system coverage. While this paper suggests that such integration may provide better framework for identifying patient safety risks, the low-level maturity of safety management and safety culture should be considered prior to the integration.Future research is also required to provide evidence on effectiveness of integration and relevant costs involved with such integration in healthcare.

‘Paper care not patient care’: Nurse and patient experiences of comprehensive risk assessment and care plan documentation in hospital

“…Globally, there is recognition that health providers should undertake a comprehensive assessment of patient safety risks, which are often managed through organisational clinical documentation (Simsekler et al, 2019 ). The benefits of a comprehensive multidimensional assessment are to detect risks and identify care needs to inform interventions and plans of care to improve patient outcomes (Ellis et al, 2017 ).…”

Risk Management Assessments and Recommendations Among Students, Staffs, and Health Care Workers in Educational Biomedical Laboratories

“… 35 , 36 The very slow and sporadic adoption of PHA approaches in both laboratories could be due to lack of expertise in healthcare, lack of training, time-intensive, and the absence of office for ergonomic safety. 37 In support of this current finding, a recent study conducted at a UK based hospital showed that the healthcare staff had few experienced using PHA to identify risks prospectively valuable challenges such as insufficient training, time, and staff constraints. 5 …”

“…These methods facilitate learning from past experiences, implementing roost cause analysis (RCA), and providing a benchmarkable dataset on past risks. 37 The current data demonstrated that both laboratories were missing the following documents (n=7), previous incident report, incident report file, equipment inventory, equipment maintenance file, chemical inventory list, bacterial strain (for microbiology lab), and waste management SOP. Based on the incident investigation (retrospective method), both microbiology and hematology laboratories do not record incidents besides incident report sheets.…”

Patient safety in home health care: a grounded theory study

“…The present study also found that the healthcare team, including the nurses, observed patient safety issues and made every effort to provide a safe model to achieve specific care goals in a targeted manner. According to the literature, nurses have always solved problems in a targeted manner by focusing on them and using detailed plans and effective measures [ 43 ]. One of these targeted cases is crisis management during home emergencies.…”