Health

DR Gabriel Adakole, a public health expert, has called on the Federal Government to improve patients safety and outcomes, to help streamline investigation processes.

Adakole made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Thursday in Abuja.

He explained patient safety include prevention of diagnostic and medical errors, injury or other preventable harm to patients during the process of health care.

It is also about the reduction of risk of unnecessary harm associated with health care, he added.

The expert advised the government and all relevant agencies to adopt patient-centred care strategies, to help improve patients safety and health outcomes.

“Clinicians sometimes view patient safety as a part of their clinical care and do not incorporate safety into their patient experience initiatives.

“Additionally, clinicians often leave patients out of patient safety protocol, despite evidence that patients can support safety initiatives.

“Properly engaging patients, driving patient satisfaction, and listening to patients are critical to supporting patient safety initiatives.

“Likewise, clinicians must make sure patients and their caregivers are knowledgeable about their care and can help prevent medical errors from falling through the cracks,” Adakole said.

He said that relevant agencies should help to create safe patient experience, noting that building a positive patient experience was more than simply making the patient happy.

“Ensuring patient safety and that the patient do not experience preventable harm are equally important to the patient experience.

“When we say patient experience, it is not in addition to quality, it is not if we have time after we have gotten care right. Patient experience is that of safety and quality.

“It is what patients think of their care, it is how efficient and effective the care is,” he said.

Adakole advised health care providers to deliver patient-centred and attentive care to ensure a safe and positive patient experience.

“For example, nurses should be quick to react to nurse call lights, and other clinicians should make sure they are circulating rooms to meet patient needs.

“Clinicians can go in on an hourly basis to make sure that patients have what they need, to make sure that things are in reach if they need to go to the bathroom, and what their pain is like,” he added.

He said this would proactively meet patients’ needs so that they needed not to shout or cry out for attention.

The expert added that healthcare professionals should also be attentive to procedure protocol, another key aspect of delivering quality patient experience.

He advised that health providers across the country should develop a patient safety checklist to ensure adverse safety events did not mar the patient’s experience.

“Patients are at risk of dozens or hundreds of harm and those harms vary by each diagnosis or procedure. Patient safety and patient satisfaction go hand-in-hand.

“For too long, Nigeria separated the quality of care and the experience of being cared for as two separate things.”

He said that healthcare providers must ensure that both patient safety and patient experience were top priorities, adding that patients would not have a positive experience without safety.

NAN recalls that the Director, Hospital Services, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr Adebimpe Adebiyi, had said Nigeria was making efforts to improve its healthcare delivery system.

Adebiyi said that this would include sustainable and adequate attention to patients’ safety and quality health care delivery.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines patient safety as a framework of organised activities that creates cultures, processes, procedures, behaviours, technologies and environments in health care.

It helps to consistently and sustainably lower risks, reduce the occurrence of avoidable harm, make errors less likely and reduce the impact of harm when it does occur.

Patient Safety aims to prevent errors and reduce the harm to patients that can occur while receiving health care, either through surgical, medication or diagnostic errors. (NAN)

KN

Tags: Adebimpe Adebiyi Gabriel Adakole Patient Safety WHO