Carmen Lester, RN, JD, CPHRM, and Jan Kleinhesselink, RN, BSHM, CPHQ
MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
Strengthen Your Risk-Management Program
Limit your liability and reduce losses if and when an incident occurs.
Risk management is more than reviewing an incident report after a patient fall or a
medication error. It's about creating a culture where you
learn from mistakes and errors, and about supporting the changes that prevent them from happening again. Here are smart, simple ways to strengthen your facility's risk-management program.
Be willing to change
If your facility is reluctant to simplify or improve processes because "we've always done it this way," you won't develop a culture of safety. You need full, detailed analysis of incidents, because a knee-jerk change may end up complicating the process without adding value to overall patient safety. We know of a facility that responded to a pain-medication documentation error by implementing a process that required all nursing staff to document narcotics in 3 different areas of the medical record. This ineffective response actually increased the risk of errors and omissions.
Take human behaviors into account. Most errors aren't caused by recklessness. They're caused by workarounds, interruptions
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THE GAME OF RISK Staff will be more likely to buy into process improvements if they understand the rationale behind them.