Five ways to improve patient safety in hospitals
NHS England’s Deputy Chief Nursing Officer recently said that patient safety “is the whole point of healthcare”, yet 40% of patients globally are harmed in primary and outpatient healthcare and 15% of hospital expenditure in OECD countries - which include the UK - are as a result of adverse events.
Although patient safety is a priority in the NHS, healthcare leaders are calling for more investment for improving patient safety issues and reducing preventable harm. Last year the BMJ reported that the NHS must take action to tackle avoidable harm at the source and safeguard sustainability for the organisation.
The NHS must improve hospital safety
Developments to healthcare task management in the past few years have worked to improve patient safety, enhance clinical outcomes, and boost staff welfare. Here, we discuss five ways that organisations can use digital task management platforms to improve patient safety in hospitals.
1. Move away from paper
Paper is still the most common way of recording information about tasks in hospitals. This brings with it the risk of missing tasks, losing paper, and struggling to manage resources during the handover of tasks at the end of shifts – all factors that compromise patient safety. A move away from paper to a digital solution would mean staff having visibility of all relevant information, updated centrally and in real-time, improving patient safety in hospitals.
2. Implement effective task management
The digitisation of task management gives staff back time previously spent making phone calls and bleeping colleagues to find out task and patient information – automatically improving patient safety in hospitals. With digital task management, tasks and relevant information are stored in a user-friendly platform allowing staff to manage their workload more effectively.
3. Streamline communications between colleagues
Digital task management enables multi-disciplinary teams to work together and improve communications across hospital departments – releasing time back to care for patients. Enhanced communication across departments unites staff and improves patient safety and clinical outcomes.
4. Improve patient flow
Improvements to patient flow invariably have positive knock-on effects to patient safety in hospitals. In hospitals, the process of treating a patient is often coordinated using a mixture of paper lists and whiteboards. With a secure digital task management system, staff can access relevant information in real-time which helps make organisation of patients easier and safer.
5. Provide safer systems
Patient safety and its importance goes further than clinical outcomes; it s also about systems. The NHS’s Patient Safety Strategy states that digitisation of resources could create “transformational improvements” in improving patient safety. With digital task management platforms, staff have easier access to the necessary information with real-time updates, enabling them to make fully informed decisions about patients.
One Infinity user told us that staff are now spending less time responding to bleeps and phone calls from colleagues which is giving them back time to care for patients and contributes to improved patient safety and a less stressful working environment.
Patient safety needs digital clinical task management
The unprecedented stress placed on the global health landscape in the past year has highlighted the need to support hospitals and community organisations to manage their patients as safely as possible. As healthcare organisations look to maximise patient safety, digital task management has to form a part of the story.
Improve patient safety with Infinity
If you’re interested in learning more about improving patient safety in your hospital or organisation using a digital solution, want to talk through your challenges or simply would like to arrange a demo of Infinity, please get in touch with our team via our contact page or by emailing us at [email protected].
You can read more about Infinity for patient flow, caseload management, and clinical communications here.
