The Patient and Worker Safety for Ambulatory Care Centers training will educate healthcare providers (HCP) on how to prevent common errors in ambulatory care.
Ambulatory care is healthcare provided in outpatient settings. These settings could include medical offices, clinics, or ambulatory surgery centers.
The scope of ambulatory care has expanded over the past decade. Therefore, to achieve safe, high-quality ambulatory care, healthcare workers must collaborate to coordinate care effectively.
What You’ll Learn
- Overview of ambulatory care
- Factors influencing safety in ambulatory care
- Overview of medication errors
- Overview of diagnostic errors
- Administrative recommendations
Details
Course length: 30 minutes.
Languages: American English
Key features: Audio narration, learning activity, and post-assessment
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Patient Safety
There are three concepts that influence safety in ambulatory care. These are the role of patient and caregiver behaviors, the role of provider-patient interactions, and the role of the community and health system. This training details each of these factors further.
For example, patient and caregiver behaviors refer to the independent roles of patients and providers in managing health. This highlights the importance of patients being active in managing their illness and treatment. Due to the outpatient nature of ambulatory care, patients often have to monitor their symptoms and implement lifestyle changes.
Medication Errors
Medication errors are errors at any step along the pathway of administering medication to a patient. It can range from a mistake in the prescribing stage, or the administration phase. Adverse drug events, or ADEs, are harmful experiences that happen as a result of exposure to a certain medication. There are several ways physicians can prevent medication errors. Clinicians must remain vigilant along each step of the medication administration process. For example, clinicians must order the appropriate medication for the appropriate patient. Additionally, the pharmacist must fill this medication properly. Lastly, pharmacists must ensure that patients receiving multiple prescriptions will not face any drug-drug interactions from the combined use of the medication.
Diagnostic Errors
There are several dimensions of ambulatory care in which diagnostic errors may arise. Here are a few of them:
Errors may occur during provider-patient encounters. Clinicians may not always make a correct diagnosis. This occurs especially when healthcare workers gather inaccurate data from a party other than the patient. These errors can have extreme consequences.
Diagnostic errors may occur from problems related to the interpretation of tests. Sometimes, clinicians unnecessarily order tests, leading to inappropriate conclusions.
Lastly, errors can occur when providers follow up with patients about test results. Providers may not adequately communicate these results to patients. If results are abnormal, this can have dire impacts on the health of the patient. Additionally, patients may misunderstand instructions if there is no effective communication.
Preventing Diagnostic Errors
As explained above, subtle biases are the root causes of many diagnostic errors. Therefore, systems should be created to reduce the effect of these biases when consulting with patients.
Clinicians often do not realize that they have made a diagnostic error. Managers and supervisors should provide regular feedback to clinicians on their performance to ensure that errors are not repeated. Please take this course to learn more about addressing diagnostic errors.
Administrative Infection Prevention Practices
Administrators of outpatient facilities must ensure that proper resources are allocated to the maintenance of an infection prevention program. This course explains some important recommendations that administrative staff should consider. First, an infection prevention program must be in place at every facility. This includes securing appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) or hand hygiene products. Additionally, at least one individual should be properly trained in managing the infection prevention program. This individual will need to develop written policies and procedures that will be implemented in the facility to prevent an infectious outbreak.
All healthcare workers must have in-depth infection prevention education. This will keep both patients and healthcare workers safe. Staff training is a continuous process, and must be repeated at least annually. For more information on infection prevention training, please refer to this course.
Monitoring Infections
This course provides several guidelines for reporting infections in outpatient healthcare facilities. For example, all facilities should be familiar with state and federal regulations regarding disease and outbreak reporting. Patients must also be notified to report any infectious symptoms before receiving treatments or health services. Healthcare professionals must adequately adhere to all infection prevention procedures.
This course helps healthcare personnel understand the proper standards for monitoring infections in the workplace. Moreover, this course discusses safety guidelines for both workers and patients. It is crucial that by the end of this course, the participants have an in-depth understanding of their role in maintaining a safe work environment.
Standard Precautions
This course provides key recommendations for situations such as hand hygiene, based on standard precautions. There are key situations in which hand hygiene should be performed. For example, all healthcare workers must wash their hands thoroughly before contact with a patient.
This course also provides guidelines on the proper use of personal protective equipment (PPE). PPE should be selected based on the type of patient interaction and the potential exposure to infectious agents.
Healthcare workers can adhere to Standard Precautions by using PPE appropriately. For example, gloves must be used in situations where there is likely to be contact with potentially infectious material.
Injection Safety
Aseptic techniques should be used when preparing and administering medications. These techniques include sterilization and cleaning procedures. Healthcare workers must follow safe injection practices to ensure that potentially infectious material isn’t transmitted between patients. Syringes should never be reused. For more information on medication administration practices, refer to this training.
Respiratory Hygiene Practices
Measures must be implemented to contain respiratory secretions within the facility. For example, workers can post signs at entrances with instructions to patients. These signs must tell patients to notify their provider of respiratory symptoms before receiving care.
