Patient Safety

Tips for Keeping Patients Safe

Submitted by Laureen Lazarovici on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 17:08
Region
Program-wide
Keywords
hand hygiene
hand washing
Topics
Patient Safety
Role
Frontline Managers
Frontline Physicians
Frontline Workers
Facility Leaders
Regional Leaders
UBT Consultants & UPRs
UBT Co-Leads
UBT Sponsors
Request Number
ED-1359
Long Teaser

"Do no harm" is our first obligation. Use these tips to guide your team in a patient safety improvement project and help ensure that KP is the safest place to get and to give care.

Communicator (reporters)
Laureen Lazarovici
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not listing only
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Download the Tip Sheet

Want a colorful tip sheet with these ideas to hand out and post on bulletin boards? Download one here!

7 Essential Tips to Help Keep Patients Safe
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Developing
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Headline (for informational purposes only)
Tips for Keeping Patients Safe
Deck
How to make KP the safest place to get and to give care
Story body part 1

Health care workers’ first obligation is “do no harm”— to see that the members and patients in our care suffer no injury or further illness. Unit-based teams across Kaiser Permanente launch hundreds of projects every year to improve patient safety. These tips can your guide your team in a patient safety improvement project and help ensure that KP is the safest place to get and to give care.

  1. Wash your hands often, and in accordance with local policies and procedures.
  2. Speak up if you observe a drift from safe practice. As the saying goes, “If you see something, say something!”
  3. Make sure patients (or family members) understand their diagnosis and plan of care. Have them describe, in their own words, their condition, what they need to do next and why that’s important.
  4. Label specimens accurately, completely and legibly.
  5. When administering high-alert medications have two people separately check specific steps of the process. For example, a pharmacist calculates dosage, prepares a syringe and compares the product to the order; then a nurse independently does the same and compares the results.
  6. Use tools such as SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) and clear language like “Safety Check” to identify a hazard, if someone is uncertain and does not feel it’s safe for the patient to proceed. 
  7. Keep yourself free from injury so you can keep your patients free from harm.

 

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Provide Good Care, Save With Secondary Tubing
  • Looking for less expensive options, like switching from primary tubing to secondary tubing
  • Using secondary instead of primary tubing for IV patients, whenever it is medically safe
  • Working through the change so everyone on the team understands and adapts

What can your team do to make sure it's using the right supplies for the job? What else could your team do to keep KP affordable for patients and members?

 

scarrpm Fri, 12/30/2016 - 10:35
Kid Food: Don't Fight It, Serve It
  • Following the successful practice of another team that solved the same problem
  • Offering kid-friendly food like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
  • Creating restaurant style menus with imagery of zoo animals

What can your team do to listen to the voice of the patient? And how could your team learn from other teams that have tackled challenges similar to yours?

 

 

scarrpm Thu, 12/29/2016 - 10:07
Going Skin-to-Skin Is Best for New Babies
  • Establishing a baseline measurement for how long moms are getting skin-to-skin contact with their new babies
  • Creating talking points of the benefits for both new baby and mother about this critical bonding
  • Communicating with staff to ensure a minimum of 60 minutes of skin-to-skin contact occurs post delivery

 What can your team do to explain the "why" behind what you are doing? 

scarrpm Wed, 12/28/2016 - 11:18

Coordinate Orders to Save Lives

  • Educating about the proper use of VTE orders for post-operative patients
  • Coordinating with pharmacists and other teams to ensure orders are followed
  • Outlining how the Joint Commission's SCIP guidelines can help improve compliance

 What can your team do to work with other teams to improve outcomes for patients? 

 

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