Introduction
It seems reasonable to state that person-centered care has become a crucial element within the scope of high-quality and developed healthcare systems. It involves adapting the services of a healthcare organization to patients’ unique needs and requirements. Such an approach indicates respect to their individual views regarding which therapy is the best for them, as well as to their values (Burton, 2018). National Patient Safety Goals might be an integral part of this approach as they aim to handle a number of specific issues in the framework of patient safety. This paper will explore the goal of improving patient identification and provide a strategy that might support this benchmark achievement. It will be organized as follows; the first section will describe the selected National Patient Safety Goal and obstacles it aspires to address. The second section will discuss the impact of the mentioned goal and its implications. Finally, the third part will propose the strategy that would maintain the specified benchmark, after which a concise conclusion will be given.
The Goal of Improving Patient Identification
The selected goal of patient identification improvement involves a principle that each customer of a healthcare organization is to be properly identified to get an appropriate treatment coherently. The Joint Commission (2019) states that the goal is to be applied in a wide range of inner organizational systems, starting from an ambulatory and ending with a nursing care center. The essence of the benchmark is to make the identification process error-free to ensure efficient therapy.
It should be claimed that patient identification errors pose a real threat to their safety in healthcare facilities. Lack of attention to this problem leads to mistakes, many of which can be fatal and lead to the prescription of unnecessary procedures or incorrect treatment (Lippi et al., 2017). It may also result in erroneous clinical decisions based on laboratory and instrumental examination data that are accidentally registered to the wrong patient. The main reason for the incorrect identification of the patient is the human factor (Lippi et al., 2017). The intensive pace of doctors’ and nurses’ work and the simultaneous admission of several patients, being in the ward with namesakes, lead to patients falling into wrong operating rooms and receiving unnecessary medications.
Implications for Person-centered Care
It might be assumed that the described goal is intersected with person-centered care due to several reasons. The accuracy of patient identification contributes to the precise creation and execution of patients’ treatment plans. It indicates the importance of the fact that confirmation of this identification cannot be a delegable responsibility (Billman, 2018). Moreover, it is the primary foundation of high-quality medical care, which is highly demanded nowadays. In turn, when patients are confident that these plans are error-free and all the prescribed procedures and medications are appropriate, they tend to express their personal needs and values (Burton, 2018). This information is vital to creating person-centered care and adapting approaches to a patient’s individual visions to the maximum extent.
If the goal is brought into life, it seems that patients will experience a number of significant outcomes. They will not face any inappropriate prescriptions, which contributes to a coherent and effective treatment process. From a patient’s perspective, the healthcare system will be reliable – it is a vital foundation of their certainty that they will be healed. This certainty might result in a more efficient therapy due to several psychological reasons. Furthermore, if the identification is fast and proper, patients spend less time in healthcare organizations, which, again, strengthens the system’s credibility in their vision.
Proposed Strategy
In order to support the realization of the goal discussed, it might be rational to implement a biometric solution. Patients will put their right palms on the reader; then, these palms will be scanned into the system. The technology will use “subcutaneous vein patterns in the palm to create an encrypted digital file” (“The value,” 2016, p. 6). The next time a patient attends the hospital, he or she will put the palm on the scanner again and confirm the date of birth. Such a two-step verification is founded on The Joint Commission’s requirement; moreover, it significantly decreases the chance of misidentifying. Within the systems of healthcare organizations, biometric identification will substantially reduce the impact of human factors as stuff will need just to confirm a patient’s date of birth. Between these systems, such a strategy will facilitate the flow of medical records if the patient is to be treated by another or several departments as the proposed system is fully automatized and digitalized.
If such a strategy is implemented, patients will deal with an uncomplicated and fast method of identification. They will need to do two simple actions of placing their palms on a reader and verifying their date of birth. Patients will not deal with the ambiguous registration and identification processes and contact their physicians and nurses immediately. Thus, they will feel the involvement in patient-centered care, which enhances their experiences to a significant extent.
Conclusion
To conclude, person-centered care-providing is founded on a patient’s values and expectations. Healthcare systems are to adhere to such an approach not only to provide an efficient treatment but also to satisfy his or her phycological needs. The improvement of patient identification contributes to achieving the latter aim as it makes the system functioning smooth, fast, and error-free. Finally, the proposed strategy of biometrical verification might result in a greater extent of automatization and digitalization of the process discussed.
References
Billman, G. (2018) Understanding the Joint Commission’s Hospital National Patient Safety Goals. rchsd.org.
Burton, L. (2018). What is person-centred care and why is it important? highspeedtraining.co.uk.
Lippi, G., Mattiuzzi, C., Bovo, C., & Favaloro, E. J. (2017). Managing the patient identification crisis in healthcare and laboratory medicine. Clinical Biochemistry, 50(10–11), 562–567.
The Joint Commission (2019). 2019 National Patient Safety Goals presentation. jointcommision.org.
The value of precise patient identification (2016). hfma.org. Web.