QUALITY AND PATIENT SAFETY. Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay

HEALTH CARE QUALITY
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Health Care Quality
Health care quality is essential for ensuring the quick recovery of the patient. It refers to the extent to which health care services for individuals and population increase the probability of the intended health outcomes and consistent with current professional knowledge. Health care quality encompasses providing the services and care needed by the patient in an effective manner, at a convenient time, at an affordable price, and ensuring safety during treatment. These form the major attributes of health care quality. This also involves avoiding medical errors and upholding patient advocacy by involving and engaging them in the treatment process. Health care quality helps to ensure that the process of treatment will be better than harm. Health care quality exists in six domains: timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, patient-centeredness, equitability, and safety.
Analysis of the Domains of Health Care Quality
Patient safety is the most important domain in health care quality. It refers to the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of health care and administration of medication and treatment. It is associated with the reduction of risk of unnecessary harm that is concerned with the treatment of the patient. It also encompasses the prevention of medical errors and the reduction of adverse and side effects as a result of medication administered to patients. In particular research, medical errors were found to be the third-leading cause of death in the United States. Also, it was found that more than 250,000 die every year in the United States due to medical errors (Sipherd, 2018). Therefore, health facilities need to ensure that patient safety is provided until the last minute of treatment. This will help to avoid these deaths that happen as a result of medical errors. Patient safety can be improved by promoting team work, verifying all medical procedures, ensuring patient understand their treatment, and monitoring technology in the treatment (Kreimer, 2010).
Effectiveness is another domain, and it ensures in providing health care processes that are based on scientific knowledge and evidence-based practice. Effectiveness helps to avoid misuse and underuse of health care services. Effectiveness aims to achieve the best results of treatment. Effectiveness in treatment helps to improve the quality of treatment leading to better patient outcomes and ensuring patient satisfaction. Effectiveness assists in providing the best medication based on knowledge and helps avoid medical errors (Blanco et al., 2014). It is, therefore, important for health facilities to provide services that are evidence-based and also based on scientific knowledge. This will include employing highly-qualified health workers.
The other domain is that the health care process should be patient-centered. In this case, the health facility should provide health care that aims to respect the patient’s preferences, needs, and values. It is important that the doctor listens to the patient’s suggestions towards treatment. These suggestions and patient values help to guide the nurses and doctors in making clinical decisions. This helps to promote patient satisfaction a...