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Technology and Telehealth; Patient Safety Goals for Home Care

 

The Joint Commission lists 5 National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) for home care, effective January 1, 2022. The first goal is to identify patients correctly. As health care providers, we can ensure that we meet this goal by using 2 patient identifiers, for example, always verifying patients’ names and dates of birth. 

Another NPSG is to use medicines correctly. Nurses can be sure to meet this goal by finding out what medications our patients are taking, what new meds they were prescribed by hospitals, rehab, and long term care facilities, and doctors in the community. Patients should also be given a written list of their current medications. I think this is one of the most challenging goals in-home care. As a visiting nurse, one of my organization’s main focus is that nurses perform med reconciliation at every visit by not just asking the patient what meds they are taking but asking to look at their pill bottles to ensure the medication, dose, and frequency that is ordered is correct. 

Another NPSG identified by the Joint Commission is to prevent infection. The main thing that nurses can do to achieve this goal is to practice proper hand hygiene as instructed by the CDC. As we often hear in nursing, this is the most important practice to help prevent the spread of infection. 

The Joint Commission also listed preventing patients from falling as another of its NPSG. The first step in accomplishing this goal is to identify patients at increased risk for falls. In-home care, assessment of a patient includes a Morse Fall Scale Score. This scale is used on every new patient to rate/identify those at high, moderate, and low risk for falls. Suppose a patienplacedified at beinincreased high risk for falls. In that case, nurses can do fall prevention teaching with patients and their families, and refer to physical and occupational therapy as appropriate. 

The 5th NPSG listed is- to identify patient safety risks. This goal can be met by nurses identifying their patient’s risk factors. A common risk seen in the home health setting is the risk of fires for those patients that are oxygen dependent. Nurses can help ensure safety by doing oxygen safety teaching with patients/families. For example, teach them not to smoke in the vicinity of oxygen and to place an “oxygen in use” sign on their door. 

Technology and Home Care

An article that discusses technology and home care is an article by BMC Health Services Research. This article discusses how information technology in healthcare can help improve patient safety, help patients maintain independence, and improve quality of health care. It also discusses how telemedicine can help those in underserved populations gain access to health care. According to Krick et al. (2019), information technology can help people in need of care improve quality of life. 

The advancement in technology impacts our daily nursing practice no matter what field of nursing we are in. If we are working in an acute care setting we can use state of the art technology to perform surgeries, for example robotic surgeries and the pyxis for medication dispensing. In home care we have telemonitoring available to monitor patients vital signs without having to be in their homes. We can utilize this technology to ensure increased safety for our patients. 

 

Reference

BMC Health Services Research. Digital Technology and Nursing Care: a Scoping Review on acceptance, effectiveness and efficiency studies of informal and formal care technologies https://www.bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com

The Joint Commission. Home Care: 2022 National Patient Safety Goals. https://www.jointcommission.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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NURSING 490

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