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Successful strategies for improving patient safety

Nurse Leader Weekly, March 24, 2008

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Hospitals aiming to comply with The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO) may want to follow Valley General Hospital's lead. Taking steps to color code pharmacy medications, eliminate unapproved abbreviations, and provide educational newsletters to staff helped the 72-bed hospital in Monroe, WA, perform high on a Joint Commission survey focused on the National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG).

• Surveyors could find no unapproved abbreviations in the entire facility since Valley General's policy requires any unapproved abbreviations to be addressed at the pharmacy. If one is found-usually written by a physician new to the hospital-the pharmacy calls the physician to discuss and correct the order, says Quinn Hatala, RN, BSN, manager of clinical quality and patient safety.
• Staff education is important, especially when surveyors perform patient tracers. "The staff received a weekly newsletter throughout what we anticipated to be our survey year, and that raised the level of awareness and reinforced their existing knowledge," says Hatala.
• Another pharmacy practice, created after a Joint Commission surveyor alerted the hospital to a possible look-alike/sound-alike danger, also helps the hospital crack down on medication compliance. Staff members already used a laminated sheet that listed both unapproved abbreviations and look-alike/sound-alike drugs on the front of every chart, but now the pharmacy labels any look-alike/sound-alike medications with bright yellow labels and larger fonts, and labels high-alert medications with red labels to ensure that pharmacists are especially careful when reading these medications.

Editor's note: This excerpt was adapted from the article "Washington State hospital keeps survey "uneventful," featured in the Reading Room on HCPro's new online resource center, www.StrategiesForNurseManagers.com. To read the full article, click here. Interested in a free trial membership that will give you 30 days to "test drive" all the exciting features on the Web site? Click here to learn more.

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