QA#6

The AHRQ tool for this week is “30 safe practices for better healthcare.” Even this tool really talk about many new ideas for improving practices, but I think “standardized abbreviations” is the most important idea they discussed. After my experience with cardiovascular clinic’s paper charts (during my directed practice), I had realized the importance of standardized abbreviations. When I was trying to abstract charts for them, I was so confused with some of the abbreviations. Many times I could not find the answer anywhere (not even on Google). The amazing thing about this experience was, the people who worked in clinic even did not knew the answer; so they had to call doctor couple of time to find out the answers, it was a quite bit surprising experience. I think, standardized abbreviations is a must tool, not only for abstracting charts, but also for saving lives.
The article I read for this week, addressed “JCAHO’s national safety goals.” I chose this article because it discusses the importance of five W’s in healthcare field. I really like their idea of how to avoid wrong site errors. Since most of the “wrong site" errors occurs in the surgical area, so surgery staff can help organization to reduce errors by following some simple steps. Placing posters or a reminder signs in surgical units with “five things must be done” during the prepping of patient can help reduce errors. First step is asking patient’s his or her name, then asking them date of birth, and third asking the site of surgery. Fourth step is repeating all the information back to the patient, and confirming their wrist band. Final step is ‘time out’ marking the surgery site. The study showed significant changes in “site error reduction”. I think it was interesting that just confirming patient’s information and site of surgery can reduce medical errors to 75%.