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That Medical Error Affects Health Care Delivery

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Week Four Discussion Question A A) What are ways that medical error affects health care delivery? How can principles of quality be used to identify, correct, and prevent errors?

Medical errors can adversely affect a medical facility. A large number of publicly reported errors can result in a negative reputation for the organization. Medical errors are costly. It costs a large amount of money to settle disputes of medical errors. It can also affect the moral of the organization. Those involved in the error feel unable to function with confidence and staff will not trust the policy and procedures of the organization.
Quality improvements are a never ending evolution. It is important that a health care organization not get comfortable in their quality policy and procedures. In order to decrease errors it is important to identify the errors that are occurring. These errors can be great or small. Reporting all errors in comfortable procedural manner will only improve the quality of care in an organization. If errors are not reported or downplayed there will not be the true reflection of what is going on, thus improvements will not occur. The staff must feel safe about reporting errors and understand that there will not be negative punishments for their report, but rewards for letting management know. Quality improves when they are all called to the attention of administrative staff. Ways to identify errors is to know the patients, know the staff, know plans of care, know policy and procedure and check and update all of these regularly, (Henneman, et. al., 2010). It is important to stop errors that are occurring. Those with experience and confidence have the ability to catch errors and correct them. It is important to have a good mix of staff with new and experienced staff mixed during shifts. The key to fixing errors are first to

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