Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Health/Wellness. When working in patient care, you’re holding people’s lives in your hands. If and when your medical gets a reputation for being unsafe, it could be difficult to recover. The following contributed post is entitled, 4 Ways To Ensure Patient Safety In Your Medical Business.
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When you run a healthcare business, patients are literally putting their life in your hands in some cases. You have a responsibility to protect your patients, and if you don’t do that, your business is likely to fail. If patients are not safe in your practice and they experience complications with their treatment, that has a big impact on your business and you will struggle to find any new patients. If complications arise because of a mistake on your part, you could even end up in legal trouble. Patient safety should always be your first priority as a medical business, and you should do anything you can to improve it. These are some of the best ways that you can improve patient safety in your medical business.
Work-Life Balance
Work-life balance is a big problem in most industries. People are working longer hours and increasingly taking their work home with them, and that means that a lot of people burn themselves out. It has a big impact on productivity, which is an issue for all businesses, but poor work-life balance can be dangerous in the medical industry. If you are going to keep patients safe, it’s important that you eliminate human error in your business, because that can lead to mistakes. When people are not getting enough rest, they will not have full concentration, and that can lead to some dangerous mistakes when working on patients. If you find that you are stretched, you may need to hire some more employees to ensure that people are not working long hours all the time.
Monitoring Systems
Investing in technology is vital to success in the medical business, but if you have a limited budget, you should direct it towards monitoring systems. If you invest in the right patient monitoring systems, like pulse oximeters (like these at Medtronic.com), temperature sensors, and heart rate monitors, it’s easier to manage patient care. You can monitor their condition in real time and ensure that they are seen to immediately if there is an issue.
Infection Control
Infection control is absolutely vital if you want to keep patients safe. When you have a lot of patients that are in a vulnerable state, infection can spread quickly and it can be incredibly dangerous. Basic precautions like hygiene are important, so make sure that you give your employees extensive training in this area. It’s also important that you are following proper procedure when sterilizing equipment and administering injections, so you can reduce the chance of blood infections.
Improve Communication
Miscommunication can be fatal in the healthcare business. If your employees are not communicating the needs of their patients to one another effectively, it’s so much easier for people to make mistakes and administer the wrong treatments. If symptoms are not communicated properly and records are not thorough, that could also lead to a misdiagnosis for patients. In some cases, giving the wrong treatment due to a misdiagnosis could be dangerous. That’s why it’s important that you find ways to improve communication and avoid these mistakes.
If you do not prioritize patient safety, you are putting lives at risk, so it’s important that you follow this advice and make sure that all of your patients are receiving the best possible care.
