Patient Safety

Even as COVID-19 vaccine distribution is bringing hope for a brighter future, the past 12 months are catching up with healthcare employees and practitioners. A recent survey exploring the pandemic’s impact on healthcare workers’ mental health reveals that 93% reported stress, while 77% said they had frustration and 76% exhaustion and burnout.

Remote work options for healthcare employees expanded significantly in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although on-site work has resumed as usual in many organizations, there’s no doubt that telecommuting has achieved new popularity among both healthcare employers and employees.

The end of 2019 signaled the beginning of a new paradigm in healthcare. The World Health Organization named 2020 the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife to highlight the vital role nurses play in healthcare delivery. Global health organizations sparked this initiative before COVID-19 emerged, and with cases continuing to spike across the globe, the role of nurses has never been more critical.

Medical history is fraught with racial disparities in healthcare, and the problem persists today. Pregnancy-related mortality rates for black women in the U.S.

During our current health crisis, it is even more vital that healthcare organizations blend patient-first care with operational expertise. Physician leaders are on the frontlines of the coronavirus crisis, and they’re under a lot of pressure to provide exceptional care while maintaining operational excellence.

Hospitals and other healthcare organizations are increasingly focused on improving the quality of patient care. This is driven partly by the move to value-based reimbursement models, competition among healthcare companies, and the more recent COVID-19 public health emergency, which put a spotlight on healthcare’s strengths and weaknesses.

With more attention than ever placed on the quality of care, what can healthcare organizations do to improve? Here are a few ideas you should consider.

As COVID-19 continues its course, schools across the U.S. have embraced distance learning to prioritize student safety and wellbeing in the midst of the pandemic. But most healthcare education programs rely on months of clinical training to adequately prepare students for handling patient relationships and needs. How will these programs have to adapt to provide high-quality clinical care education virtually?

Healthcare organizations around the world face a growing pandemic, and with it, the need to quickly staff for a surge of critically ill patients. 

With high turnover and staffing shortages, healthcare recruitment can be challenging in the best of times, but now countries face the critical need to quickly bring thousands more healthcare workers into their health system.

Healthcare organizations across the country face stay-at-home orders that make it difficult to deliver in-person care. But even outside of the urgent need for providers to provide care to critically ill patients with COVID-19, patients need access to care when they are ill or injured by other causes. 

Patient Safety Awareness Week, which runs March 8-14, encourages healthcare providers, organizations, patients, and the general public to learn about local and global healthcare safety issues. 

Healthcare safety issues, or “medical harm,” are a significant cause of death in the United States. Even when such errors do not result in death, they can still have long-term negative effects on a patient’s health and finances. Patient Safety Awareness Week is an opportunity for healthcare organizations to consider the potential causes of medical harm and how to prevent it.