A Safe Hospital, Reduce Risk, Save Lives
The Mission of Safe Hospital:
• Identify Safe Practices for prevention in hospitals worldwide
• Describe each of these Safe Practices, comparing their potential impact on prevention and their implementation complexity.
• Prioritize the Safe Practices identified according to the balance between impact and implementation complexity.
What is a Safe Hospital?
When we prevent healthcare workers from facing a wide range of hazards on the job, including needle stick injuries, back injuries, latex allergy, violence, and stress. Although it is possible to prevent or reduce health care worker exposure to these hazards, health care workers actually are experiencing increasing numbers of occupational injuries and illnesses.
When patients and visitors entering any hospital, they assume that they are in a safe environment. Maintaining a safe environment in hospitals depends on not only the infrastructure, but also the equipment, the materials and the practices that are used on the premises with the patients and the visitors.
When a disaster strikes .A safe hospital is an establishment whose services remain accessible and functional at maximum capacity and within the same infrastructure immediately following the disaster. The term ‘safe hospital’ encompasses all health facilities, regardless of their level of complexity. A hospital is ‘safe’ when it enjoys the highest level of protection possible, when access routes to the health facility are open and when the water supply and electric power and telecommunications can continue supplying the health facility, thus guaranteeing continuity of operations and the ability to absorb the additional demand for medical care.
When hospital practices elements that can reduce costly and avoidable incidents of patient harm, such as patient falls, hospital-acquired infections and medication errors.
Simple Safe Practices Promoted by "Safe Hospital"
01 - Single use of injection devices
02 - Improve hand hygiene
03 - Influenza vaccinations for workers and patients
04 - Measures to prevent central venous catheter-related infections
05 - Measures to prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia (nosocomial pneumonia)
06 - Measures to prevent surgical site infections
07 - Color coding of cleaning materials and equipment to prevent infections
08 - Measures to control performance of correct procedure at the correct body site
09 - Measures to ensure correct communication during patient handovers
10 - Patient identification
More: Simple Safe Practices Promoted by "Safe Hospital"
11 - Measures to prevent catheter and tubing misconnections
12 - Evaluation of risk of development of pressure ulcers
13 - Evaluation of risk of thromboembolism
14 - Monitoring and supervision of patients on long-term anticoagulant treatment
15 - Use of protocols to assess patients at risk in the case of tests with contrast that may lead to renal failure
16 - Measures to ensure that written information on terminal patients’ wishes is highlighted in their care records
17 - Measures to ensure that all care received by patients is provided by competent,
trained and, where appropriate, certified professionals
18 - Measures to ensure safety of patients with latex-related allergies
19 - Precautionary measures when physically containing or immobilizing patients
20 - Recommendations to prevent confusion between look-alike, sound-alike medication names
More: Simple Safe Practices Promoted by "Safe Hospital"
21 - Measures to ensure medication accuracy at transitions in care
22 - Measures to identify all high-risk drugs and establish policies and procedures for their use
23 - Measures to ensure prevention and correct treatment of surgical procedure
related acute myocardial infarction
24 - Promotion of safety measures for oral or enteral drug administration
25 - Measures to promote safe use of injectable or IV administered drugs
26 - Measures to ensure effective evaluation of A&E trauma patients
27 - Measures to prevent suicide in hospital patients
28 - Rapid response teams for critical patients
29- Hiring practices in hospitals including screening process
What are the objectives of a ‘Safe Hospital’ program?
• To promote international national policies and regulations on making hospitals safe environments
• To protect the lives of the occupants of a hospital or health facility.
To protect the economic investment as well as the functionality of both new facilities and those identified as priorities within the health services network.
• To compile, organize and monitor the implementation of policies and safe measures.
• Introduction to Integrated Environmental Health Management Schemes in health facilities.
• Inspect utility management (water, electricity, ventilation, communication)
• To promote Fire safety and disaster plan.
• To promote management of hazardous medical, chemical, and radioactive materials and wastes.
• Introduction of biomedical engineering measures
• Inspect security effectives in hospitals worldwide
• Inspect hiring and screening practices in hospitals
How can we reduce the vulnerability of hospitals ?
The vulnerability of a hospital can be reduced by carrying out a functional diagnosis and identifying priorities components during the accreditation processes, certification and licensing for the health facilities and ensuring the availability of essential resources for safe hospital practices.
What kind of follow-up is needed?
Once the criteria, goals, and indicators are defined, ‘safe hospital’ programs and practices can serve as a model.The designation of " safe hospital model "will provide an incentive for establishing these type of programs and working to achieve its achievable goals. The experiences and lessons learned from this process must be documented and shared at the global level.
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