Important Patient Safety Information
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New CDC guide includes checklist for infection prevention in out-patient settings
Greater understanding and implementation of infection prevention guidance in outpatient environments is the goal of a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) checklist issued to accompany its concise Guide to Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings: Minimum Expectations for Safe Care. The checklist is of increasing importance as healthcare delivery continues to transition from acute-care hospitals to outpatient settings.
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Safe Injection Practices
Over the past decade, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 125,000 patients in the United States have been notified of potential exposure to hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and HIV due to lapses in basic infection control practices. Many of these lapses involved healthcare providers reusing syringes, resulting in contamination of medication vials or containers, which were then used on subsequent patients.
Visit Princeton Insurance Supports State Efforts Encouraging Safe Injection Practices for links to helpful resources and to continue reading this article.
Informed Consent: Try Interactive Tutorials
Informed consent is an important communication process between physicians and patients that can help support and bolster the physician-patient relationship. It is not merely signatures on a consent form. Properly performed and documented, the informed consent process helps to align the patient’s and the physician’s expectations of treatment outcomes.
Failure to provide patients with sufficient information so that they can make an informed decision about their care places a physician at risk for a legal claim for injury from a complication or unanticipated outcome – even if it was not the result of negligence.
The use of interactive tutorials and other handouts can help to reinforce the information you provide to patients concerning the nature of their condition or illness, the risks and benefits of, and alternatives to, proposed treatment and can enhance your ability to manage patient expectations during the informed consent process.
Such resources, offered for a wide array of diseases and conditions, tests and diagnostic procedures, as well as surgery and treatment options, are available for your patients for free through Medline Plus, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. Printed summaries are available at the end of each tutorial.
Simply go to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tutorial.html to learn more about these resources or to view some of the free available tutorials.
FDA Alert Service: HCNN
Currently, important product-related patient safety alerts that have been mandated by the FDA are sent to you through the U.S. mail. The Health Care Notification Network (HCNN) is a service that moves these alerts onto a secure, online network with numerous beneftis to you. Read more about it and find out how to sign up here: http://www.riskreviewonline.com/RiskReviewOnline/RiskManagement/HCNN.