National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG) (Nursing)

00:00 Welcome back, everyone.

00:02 Patient safety goals are essential to the well-being of patients and the success of hospitals and other health care establishments.

00:10 The Joint Commission, an organization that accredits healthcare organizations and programs, established the National Patient Safety Goals program to assist accredited organizations in addressing areas of concern.

00:22 The purpose of the National Patient Safety Goals is to improve patient safety.

00:27 The goals focus on problems in healthcare safety and how to solve them.

00:31 The National Patient Safety Goals were established in 2002 by the Joint Commission and they went into effect January 1, 2003.

00:42 They were determined from input from a variety of sources, such as practitioners, provider organizations, purchasers, consumer groups, and other stakeholders.

00:54 So now let's review the National Patient Safety Goals.

00:58 First, improve the accuracy of patient identification.

01:02 This involves use of at least two patient identifiers when providing care, treatment, and services.

01:08 Acceptable identifiers are an individual's name, assigned identification number, telephone number, or other person's specific identifier.

01:17 Now remember, newborns are at higher risk because they cannot repeat back to you with their name or identification number, so pay special attention to them.

01:26 Also, eliminate transfusion errors related to patient misidentification.

01:30 This involves matching of blood or blood components to the order.

01:34 Also, matching a patient to the blood or blood component, and also involves either a two-person verification process, or a one-person verification process when accompanied by an automated identification technology such as barcoding.

01:49 Next, improve the effectiveness of communication among caregivers.

01:53 Report critical results of tests and diagnostic procedures on a timely basis.

01:58 Critical results of tests and diagnostic procedures which fall significantly outside of the normal range might indicate a life-threatening situation.

02:07 Be sure to provide the responsible licensed caregiver.

02:09 These results within an established time frame, so that the patient can be properly treated.

02:14 Next, improve the safety of using medications.

02:17 Be sure to label all medications, medication containers, and other solutions on or off the sterile field in perioperative or other procedural settings.

02:27 This also involves reduction of patient harm associated with the use of anticoagulant therapy.

02:32 And accurate patient medication information.

02:36 Next, reduce the harm associated with clinical alarm systems by improving the safety of clinical alarm systems.

02:44 Clinical alarm systems are really great for indicating potential patient problems, but if they're not properly managed, it could compromise patient's safety.

02:53 Individual alarm signals sometimes are difficult to detect, especially if you've got numerous alarm signals in many patient care areas going off at the same time.

03:03 Also, staff may become desensitized through the noise and displayed information because they hear it all of the time, and it might cause them to miss or ignore alarm signals or even disable them.

03:14 Next, reduce the risk of health care-associated infections.

03:18 Be sure to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the CDC hand hygiene guidelines or the current World Health Organization, the WHO hand hygiene guidelines.

03:30 These support evidence-based practices for preventing healthcare-associated infections due to multidrug-resistant organisms in acute care hospitals, to central line-associated bloodstream infections, to surgical site infections, and finally, indwelling catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

03:50 Next, the hospital identifies safety risks inherent in its patient populations.

03:56 This is to identify patients at risk for suicide.

03:58 Now this requirement applies only to psychiatric hospitals and to patients being treated for emotional or behavioral disorders in a general hospital.

04:07 Suicide of a patient while in a staffed, around-the-clock care setting frequently is reported as a type of a sentinel event.

04:14 Identification of individuals at risk for suicide while under the care of or following discharge from a health care organization is an important step in protecting these at-risk individuals.

04:25 And finally, follow the universal protocol for preventing wrong site, wrong procedure, and wrong person surgery.

04:33 To do this, you need to conduct a preprocedure verification process.

04:37 You need to make sure that you are conducting the correct surgery on the correct patient on the correct place on the patient's body.

04:46 Once that's been identified, make sure to mark the procedure site, then perform a time-out immediately before the procedure.

04:55 This is a final assessment for identification of the correct patient, site, and procedure, and it's conducted before anesthesia for patient involvement.

05:04 Remember, healthcare professionals understanding of new requirements and how to put them into action is the key to success.

05:11 So when thinking of everything we've learned today, I'd like you to consider this question.

05:16 What are the National Patient Safety Goals? They are improve the accuracy of patient identification, improve the effectiveness of communication among caregivers, improve the safety of using medications, reduce the harm associated with clinical alarm systems, reduce the risk of healthcare associated infections, and the hospital identifies safety risks inherent in its patient population, the universal protocol for preventing wrong site, wrong procedure, wrong person surgery.

05:54 I hope you enjoyed today's video on the National Patient Safety Goals.

05:57 Thanks so much for watching.