Nursing

Try these patient safety and medication use interview tips

Nurse Leader Weekly, April 25, 2003

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If your Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) survey takes place this year, consider the following advice from the JCAHO when discussing your patient safety and medication systems: Note: This interview will likely go away in 2004.

The new interview is an ideal time to discuss your failure modes and effects analysis results, says JCAHO spokesperson Mark Forstneger. Work with your colleagues on the following:

  • Share a flow chart of your medication management process and a completed medication systems analysis, says Forstneger.
  • Create a patient safety notebook containing all your initiatives-including patient safety goals compliance-to stay organized. "It's great to have a little notebook on patient safety so you can go through it and show surveyors what you have done," says a source close to the JCAHO.
  • Don't forget to include in your patient safety notebook what you've done in response to the Sentinel Event Alerts. Although you are no longer required to comply with them (the patient safety goals replaced them), you still must read and consider the Alerts, and discuss them, says the observer.
  • Continually evaluate your organizations' weak points to prioritize projects. Many people refer to the Institute for Safe Medication Practice's self-assessment test on medications at www.ismp.org/vhasurvey/survey_instructions.html.
  • Consider patient safety during new construction or remodeling projects, and show how you did so. Infection control, a hot area for 2003 surveys, also falls under patient safety.

In preparing for the new patient safety and medication interview, you should also consider the following surveyor questions, saved by health care professionals who have recently undergone the survey themselves:

  • How did staff present the patient safety program during orientation?
  • When did you begin your patient safety initiative?
  • How do you handle verbal orders?
  • How do you address medication misadministration?
  • How do you handle dangerous abbreviations?
  • What do you tell patients about their role in preventing errors?
  • Tell me about what you report as an error. Do you report near misses?
  • What do you discuss about safety during unit meetings?
  • On what kinds of events do you perform root-cause analyses?

Adapted from: Briefings on JCAHO, www.hcmarketplace.com/Prod.cfm?id=16&S=ENMW



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