Action Plan for a Sentinel Event
There have been cases of hospitals reporting experiences of adverse health effects from patients, serious events that require safety and care when handling them. These events have been handled by analyzing the safety of patients’ health conditions to provide an improved and sustainable process that prevents the patients from harm and reduces the risk that is associated with the method adopted in managing a given condition. This paper discusses a scenario of a wrong medication event on a patient and the importance of establishing a risk management committee in promoting cost-saving safety initiatives.
Sentinel Event Explanation
A sentinel event at a hospital setting is a patient safety event that can result in death, severe temporary harm, or any event that endangers a patient life by causing permanent harm (McClead & Brady, 2016). In this case, wrong medication on a patient resulted in effects such as coma and severe allergy with grave prognosis, making a sentinel event that requires an immediate response and investigation (Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospital, 2016). In case of a sentinel event occurring, hospital management is entitled to set up a risk management committee with the aim of prioritizing patients’ health.
Role and Purpose of Committee
A data manager in charge of the patient’s record is entitled to implement and verify the information and details that have been recorded of the patient are accurate and relate to the type of medication that has been administered. A compliance officer investigates the risk and conducts audits to identify the cause of the risk. The attending physician is responsible for ensuring all the aspects of patient safety and care have been observed by supervising and offering the required training (National Health Service, 2015). The facility attorney is entitled to ensuring that all the practices and regulations necessary in a hospital and the policies have been observed while patients are being attended to. A public relations officer ensures a hospital maintains a good image in the eyes of the public by overseeing the internal operations of the health facility and being aware of the facility’s strategic objectives.
Function of Committee
A corporate CEO has the responsibility of ensuring the efficient performance of all the aspects of a hospital setting. A risk manager prevents situations that can lead to a liability or loss in the hospital including preventing sentinel events. A hospital pharmacist monitors the supply of medicines, dispensing, and purchasing drugs that are required for all medications (National Health Service, 2015). The role of an IT manager at a hospital setting is to assist other staff in providing better care for patients’ by ensuring there is good infrastructure for healthcare delivery, decreasing medical errors, and promoting patient safety.
Data, Tools, and Technique
The technique used to identify and manage sentinel events involves reviewing the data and the details of the patient that have been recorded, evaluating the effectiveness of the medication program, and identifying the contributing factors associated with the sentinel event (McClead & Brady, 2016). Identifying the root causes of the incidences is a key technique that focuses on the appropriateness of the processes used during the medication (Bos, Dongelmans, Greuters, Kamps, & Laan, 2020). Consulting a patient safety specialist is also a strategy that hospitals are required to use in identifying sentinel incidences.
In response to this scenario, the data manager should review the patient’s information to the medication offered and advise the staff correctly. The compliance officer should conduct an audit of the process used during the medication while the pharmacist identifies whether there were errors while dispensing the drugs used. The risk manager should devise ways of managing the risk on the patient by checking whether there were mistakes during the administration of the medication. The hospital CEO has to chair the risk management committee and analyze whether each of the medical staff performed their roles appropriately. Dr. Jones as the attending physician should consider revisiting his supervisory role to see whether all the health advice he offered was followed. The IT manager is required to check whether the correct patient safety measures were observed during the medication while the facility attorney rules on whether all the policies were observed.
Importance of Prevention in Cost-saving
The identification and prevention of sentinel incidences serve as cost-saving strategies by reducing the usage of drugs used to counter the effects of the previously used medication. It also minimizes hospitalization costs for the patients by reducing the time the patient spends in the care unit when a patient’s safety is observed with the type of medication. Therefore, this plays a significant role in reducing and cost-saving expenditure.