Workarounds and Patient Safety

Workarounds in the healthcare industry are dangerous because they relate to necessary processes being skipped to save time, basically shortcuts (Berlinger, 2016). An example of a common workaround is the failure to conduct double checks, which, historically, medical practitioners have considered tedious (Kadang et al., 2021). Nonetheless, this discussion shall refer to a technological workaround that I have witnessed nurses avoid which is implementing pulse oximetry in vital testing. From personal experience, I have been instructed to measure my vitals only to find out that the faulty pulse oximetry is not functioning. Furthermore, upon repeated occasions, I get the same response meaning that it becomes a skipped process during the measurement of vitals. 

This deviation from health practice in conducting vitals testing using pulse oximetry poses a health risk to patients. There are benefits in the use of pulse oximetry, such as the determination of oxygen level in blood which is essential in the determination of the need for a ventilator due to minimal oxygen supply, a person's capability for elevated activity, isolation of possible lung failure, and much more (Gravenstein, 2016). Furthermore, in the modern-day, faulty pulse oximetry could also aid in the early detection of Covid-19 in the early stages considering that the virus usually presents itself as respiratory disease (Shah et al., 2020). 

 With the functions of pulse oximetry mentioned above, the absence of such a device could lead to the failure to detect the early warnings of respiratory-related disease or worsening of low oxygen level conditions, which could become chronic or lead to eventual death. Therefore, the practice of avoiding the use of pulse oximetry is not beneficial.  

Patient Safety

While my clinic site attempted to ensure patient safety, I observed some loopholes that could expose the patients to danger. One of the patient safety concerns that I observed in information management, nurses tend to collect information regarding their patients, which they fill out on a form. However, such a means of data collection poses the risk of getting lost, yet it contains confidential information regarding a patient. A recommendation is to use a technological system in the form of a blockchain to prevent tempering that allows the entry of information, thus minimizing loss and external access. 

Secondly is observed that there is was a bulky manner of information management which reduced efficiency. The specific example was in the patient discharge method, where the patient would receive a document containing excessive information regarding how they could manage their health issue. I would notice some patients would even forget the document, or in the case of people closer to me, they would have lost it barely a week after leaving the hospital. Consequently, upon losing such a document, the health confidentiality of the patient would get exposed. Therefore, I would recommend using technology to transmit these documents, such as email, so that the information is easily accessible to the patient and cannot easily get lost.

Finally, I observed that the medication administration area at the clinic was not well managed, in my opinion. The area was accessible to every medical practitioner in the facility; thus, there was no track of who was entering or leaving the room and what specific purpose. Infact, I once entered with the nurse on duty, which I felt was a breach of confidentiality because the room contained paper and a field of patients' medication history. The impact of such a method is that such information could get into the wrong hands, hence exposing the patient's medical information. Therefore, I would recommend digitizing the medication information and placing protocols on persons with authority to access the medication area.