Celebrated on September 17th each year, World Patient Safety Day is a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative which puts focus on the critical issue of patient safety in healthcare. While many associate patient safety with the more visible adverse effects of medical errors, such as incorrect medication or surgical mistakes, the topic of patient safety extends far beyond that to include anything which hinders an optimal outcome for the patient. Examples of this include errors which lead to diagnostic delays or inaccuracies, or communication breakdowns and incomplete data access which may ultimately limit treatment choices.
The move towards actively ensuring accuracy and precision in medical care rather than merely avoiding mistakes, has been taking place over many years now. It’s therefore apt that the .2024 theme for World Patient Safety Day is around “Improving Diagnosis- Get it Right, Make it Safe!” with WHO stating that they will work across stakeholders to prioritize diagnostic safety and support health workers in making correct decisions.
Fortunately, a wide array of medical technologies already exists to help caregivers achieve patient safety goals – from clinical decision support tools to electronic patient records. In today’s article, we will explore these innovations and additionally, examine the barriers that prevent their optimal use. We’ll also discuss strategies to help healthcare professionals better leverage medical devices, software, and solutions, so that patients and staff can fully benefit from the latest advances and more easily adopt technology for long term gain, ultimately leading to improved health outcomes for all.
The Role of Technology in Improving Patient Safety
Technology plays a crucial role in enhancing patient safety by providing comprehensive medical histories, enabling early disease detection, and making sense of big data for actionable insights. It allows for personalized treatments, improves healthcare staff efficiency, and supports adherence to evidence-based protocols. Moreover, technology aids the transition from reactive to proactive and towards predictive healthcare.
Key technological advancements include:
Health Information Systems and Electronic Health Records (EHRs): Electronic documentation improves the accuracy and accessibility of patient information, including medical histories, diagnostic images, and genetic data. This also helps physicians plot timelines, correlate evidence, and compare results over time to better understand disease progression and treatment effectiveness.
Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) CDSS combines data points, visualizes changes in patient status, and provides evidence-based protocols. It assists healthcare providers in decision-making, reduces diagnostic errors with reminders and alerts, and serves as an additional safeguard to ensure nothing is missed.
Telemedicine: Telemedicine extends the reach of experts to non-specialists, whether in remote areas or at neighbouring hospitals. Bringing specialist knowledge quickly to the point of need increases and more evenly distributes the access to care. It also supports chronic disease management by linking patients at home, often with wearable devices, to healthcare specialists who can monitor signs of deterioration.
Imaging: Advanced imaging technologies incorporate protocols and features to improve diagnostic quality while enhancing workflows. This increases the number of patients who can be seen and diagnosed each day and reduces the burden on staff.
These advancements demonstrate the significant impact technology can have on patient safety, making healthcare more efficient, accurate, and proactive.
Challenges in the Current Use of Technology
Despite the enormous potential of medical technology, several challenges hinder its optimal use, thereby limiting its impact on improving patient safety. These hurdles include but are not limited to
Usability Issues: Complex interfaces and poor device usability can lead to errors, making it difficult for healthcare providers to effectively use these technologies. This is also encumbered by user instructions which are hard to follow or difficult to retrieve.
Data Overload and Alert Fatigue: Healthcare professionals are tasked with managing multiple devices, making it impossible to become an expert on all of them. The sheer volume of data they handle each day can lead to overload and alert fatigue, causing critical insights to be missed or ignored.
Lack of User Knowledge and Product Mastery: Insufficient familiarity with technology reduces its effectiveness. Often, healthcare providers, limited by time and capacity, only utilize the basic functions of a medtech solution, overlooking advanced features. High staff turnover further complicates this, as product expertise is frequently lost when team members leave.
Other barriers to fully optimizing technology include interoperability issues, fragmented systems, and data privacy concerns.
Strategies to Optimize Technology Use.
With all this in mind, how can we ensure that healthcare providers and their patients are maximizing the benefits of medical technology to enhance patient safety? Several strategies can be implemented:
Continuous Training: Ongoing training for healthcare providers on the proper use of technology is essential. This training should emphasize the balance between technology and clinical judgment and be delivered over time, rather than in a single session. An ideal approach includes an easy-to-follow onboarding program for new users, complemented by continuous, advanced, and refresher training available at the point of need, when it's most relevant and in the proper context. It should also be self-sufficient and accessible even when the technology provider is not there.
Accessible Information at the Point of Need: To support clinicians in mastering technology, “how-to” content must be quickly accessible, precisely when and where it's needed. Acting as a co-pilot, this information helps users become familiar with their solutions and gain confidence in using features correctly. This approach fosters long-term technology adoption, allowing innovations to become fully embedded in the workflow.
Just the Right Amount of Instruction: Instead of relying on lengthy user manuals and computer-based trainings, it's more effective to complement face-to-face sessions with short, targeted snippets of information. These key pieces of knowledge should be easily accessible even after the training and quick to locate when required.
For those looking to accelerate and maintain their technology adoption, the SIMPI How-to platform offers an innovative solution. SIMPI is a browser-based application that provides short, context-specific content blocks available precisely when and where they are needed. This platform is particularly valuable for long-term technology adoption, helping users learn advanced functions as the individual user becomes ready to learn. It also enables hospitals to keep new joiners as well as experienced staff up-to-date with everything the technology has to offer.
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Additional strategies for leveraging technology for patient safety include
User-Centered Design and Patient-Centric Approach: Involve end-users in the design and testing of healthcare technologies to ensure tools are intuitive and user-friendly. A patient-centric approach ensures that technology enhances, rather than replaces, human interaction, improving the overall quality of care.
Effective Change Management: Implement structured change management processes when introducing new technologies. Engaging stakeholders and providing support during transitions are essential for smooth and successful adoption.
Conclusion
Optimizing the use of medical technology is crucial for enhancing patient safety. However, to help caregivers fully leverage these innovations, it's essential to address challenges like data overload, staff turnover, and limited capacity.
By prioritizing product mastery and technology adoption in a way that is manageable, actionable, and sustainable over the long term, the healthcare industry can make significant strides toward more effective and safer care.
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