Summary
Monthly publications from the Joint Commission that outlines an incident, topic or trend in healthcare that could compromise patient safety.
Content
A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) evaluating causes for maternal death indicated issues related to mental health, such as depression, anxiety, death by suicide, and substance use disorders (SUDs) as the most frequent underlying cause, followed by clinical conditions.
Patients who are seriously ill often turn to, or are inappropriately admitted to, already overburdened emergency departments (EDs) for care that may be better addressed by palliative care services.
The purpose of this Quick Safety is to provide guidance for managing and storing packaged sterile supplies within your facility with the goal to keep patients safe from infection and other potential harm from expired or compromised supplies and devices.
Surgical instruments and other critical devices – those that enter sterile tissues – are reprocessed and reused every day in hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, and other health care facilities. For organizations performing reprocessing, ensuring that those instruments and devices are reusable – that they are in good condition, and can be cleaned and sterilized following validated manufacturer’s instructions – is critical to patient safety.
Health care providers reported an increase in intimate partner violence (IPV) during the COVID-19 pandemic. IPV survivors seek medical care in many health care settings, but survivors often don’t readily share their abuse experiences with providers unless specifically asked and if they are ready to accept help.
Today’s always-online health care environment requires an all-hands approach to cybersecurity: a data safety culture which permeates the entire organisation and its operations.
It’s estimated that one in every 100 hospitalized patients will be affected by non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NVHAP). This issue of Quick Safety focuses on the call’s challenge to health care systems to implement and support NVHAP prevention, and to add NVHAP prevention measures to education for patients, health care professionals and students.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shed a light on the many gaps in health care that diverse populations have experienced for decades. As integral parts of their communities, hospitals and medical centers need to understand the diverse populations they serve, including minority groups and vulnerable populations.
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