From a personal perspective, the study dedicated to the examination of patient safety incidents in the home and their potential reasons is an appropriate first attempt to explore the area of home hospice nursing. However, it has several specific flaws, and its findings cannot be regarded as fully credible. First of all, the researchers identified two major categories of incidents that lead to the patients’ unnecessary harm – injuries from falls and inappropriate or inadequate symptom control (Smucker, Regan, Elder, & Gerrety, 2014). In my estimation, the second category basically represents the reason for incidents, while its outcome may be described as the patients’ unnecessary pain or suffering. In addition, the inclusion of the type of harm to informal caregivers and family members into the definition of patient safety incidents may be excessive and unnecessary. It goes without saying that family members, relatives, neighbors, and friends compose the patient’s setting and maybe caregivers, however, their emotional and physical state cannot be evaluated from the perspective of patient safety incidents.
Nevertheless, the most significant flaw of this research that brings into question the credibility of its findings is the absence of different variants of data collection. The scholars used the method of the semi-structured telephone interview and asked the participants to describe patient safety incidents from their practice. This way of data connection cannot be regarded as totally objective as the validity of information depends on its source. In other words, the participants of the interview could forget the essential details of events and describe only prominent incidents, or they could hide significant facts. In addition, the researchers could not evaluate the participants’ honesty as they did not have personal visual contact with interdisciplinary team members and could not observe their behavioral patterns and body language. The discrepancy between the findings of this research and previous studies from health care practice and hospitals related to the errors of health care providers caused the patients’ unnecessary harm (Smucker, Regan, Elder, & Gerrety, 2014). The active surveillance of patient safety incidents under the hospice providers’ direct control will provide more information for in-depth data analysis and make further research more credible.
References
Smucker, D. R., Regan, S., Elder, N. C., & Gerrety, E. (2014). Patient safety incidents in-home hospice care: The experiences of hospice interdisciplinary team members. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 17(5), 540–544.