Nursing

Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS)

The purpose of this assignment is to assess how quality improvement can be used to reduce errors and improve patient safety.

Human error is a concern that affects every aspect of health care and is one that providers must account for when creating systems and processes to ensure patient safety. The Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) was created as a quality improvement tool to better understand the elements that threaten safety and to recommend ways organizations can improve quality outcomes by reducing risk.

In an essay of 1,000-1,250 words, evaluate the following aspects as they relate to SEIPS:

Describe the seven types of errors that can occur in a health care environment. Provide examples of each. Are all these errors preventable? Describe measures that could have been implemented to improve patient safety and reduce the occurrence of each error you described.
Discuss the framework of the SEIPS tool and how it is used within a health care environment. Compare the SEIPS tool with one other error-reduction strategy presented in the textbook and explain when each tool might be applied.
Explain the positive effect that the SEIPS tool can have on the reduction of errors in high-risk health care settings.
Discuss the relationship between CQI and SEIPS in producing quality outcomes for health care organizations. How does improving quality outcomes with a patient-centric focus help to promote a concern for the common good within the public arena?
Prepare this assignment according to the APA guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

ANSWER

On many occasions, healthcare systems have suffered various errors harboring quality and accurate service delivery. Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) is a human-engineered system approach that has been introduced in the healthcare systems to improve the quality of service delivery subject to patient treatment and recovery. SEIPS system highlights both the causes and measures of medical errors; it also illustrates how the work system within a healthcare environment can affect patients and employees’ safety and organizational outcomes. SEIPS has contributed to the provision of high-quality services by minimizing healthcare system errors. This article bases its discussion on how quality improvement and enhancement can reduce errors and optimize patient safety.

Types of Errors in a Healthcare Environment

The first error in a healthcare environment is the medication error, generally described as an event that may result in inappropriate use resulting in patient harm. The second error is the Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs), resulting from inadequate care and substandard within the hospital; it mostly occurs in urinary tracts, bloodstreams, and surgical sites. Surgical error is the third type of error that generally occurs due to wrong procedures, wrong location, unintended retention of foreign objects in the body, and surgeries on inappropriate sites (Brown et al., 2017).

Laboratory error comes as the fourth type of error; it usually occurs due to a wrong specimen, reagents, improper testing, environment of testing, and poor communication between the laboratory and the healthcare professionals. The fifth error is Patient Falls, described as an unplanned descent to the floor with or without injury to the patient. Pressure sore/ulcer is the sixth type of error that mostly occurs in damaged skin areas resulting from staying in one position for long. Documentation/computer error comes as the seventh error; this results from poor handwriting, omissions, and copy and pasting practices.

All the above-highlighted errors are preventable. Some of the prevention measures are but not limited to: Medication errors can be prevented by proper naming, labeling, packaging, and use of the right abbreviations. HAIs errors can be prevented by practicing proper hand hygiene, wearing gloves and gowns, sterilizing equipment, and keeping patients’ mouths clean. Surgical errors can be prevented by practicing pre-procedure verification, surgical site marking, and taking surgical breaks, also known as surgical “time out” before every surgical procedure. Use of the right sample, use of reputable laboratory, and trusted sources of information in understanding results context are ways of preventing laboratory errors (Schwendimann et al., 2018).

Patient fall error can be prevented by practicing a disciplinary approach to care, working within the hospital environment, and ensuring good coordination. Practicing high skin hygiene, changing body position at least every two hours, and using pillows and products that relieve pressure prevent pressure sore errors. Finally, documentation errors can be prevented by close monitoring of hospitals by outside agencies, offering performance programs and training to healthcare employees.

The framework of the SEIPS Tool

The SEIPS tool comprises five major functions; organization, tools and technology, environment, tasks and person. It has been designed in a way that it is capable of outlining components which directly attributes to the causes and measures of healthcare errors by highlighting component interactions. It further elaborates on how the component interactions directly result in acceptable or unacceptable processes by molding itself into a framework familiar to many healthcare professionals. It has been used to improve methods and results, thereby enabling high-quality service delivery to patients (Werner et al., 2020).

Comparing the SEIPS tool to Improving Handovers as a strategy of minimizing errors, the latter entails a comprehensive methodology and process to enhance healthcare service delivery quality and patient safety. Improving the Handover strategy entails transitions of patient care from one professional to the other systematically. SEIPS can be applied when patient safety requires the interaction of many reagents, tests, medication, and procedures to administer quality service. Improving the Handover strategy is used when the hospital wants to avoid last-minute handing over patient responsibility to another healthcare professional, thereby allowing smooth and pressure-free transition.

Some of the SEIPS tool’s positive effects are enhancing broad views of processes, system descriptions, system components, and interactions and clearly outlines the impact of patient safety and employee safety and organizational outcomes. SEIPS provides a wide range of solutions at the disposal of all healthcare professionals (Steele, Talley, & Frith 2018).

Relationship between CQI and SEIPS

CQI can be described as an institutionalized program or software with a critical role in enhancing outcomes and reducing care costs continually by using periodic adjustments. CQI can give room to ask questions in every step, thereby minimizing errors as opposed to SEIPS, which must be operated by trained healthcare professionals to achieve the required results. The CQI comprises data analytics geared around ongoing improvements to operations, processes, and activities to enhance patient experience and cost reduction; SEIPS, on the other hand, only focuses on patient safety and prevention of errors by enhancing high accuracy (Lumley et al., 2020).

Improvement of quality outcomes may help promote concern for the common good since it will play a key role in patient recovery and saving many lives. It also helps the public gain trust in their respective healthcare systems since the mortality rate will be low; another aspect that arises from quality improvement in healthcare environments is the economic aspect. Providing healthcare services will be affordable to many, thereby allowing for economic growth at both individual and government levels. Finally, patients will be guaranteed of utmost safety and quality service delivery from the healthcare employees.

Conclusion

Studies and research have shown improper and various patient deaths resulting from carelessness and healthcare professionals’ ignorance. Governments need to prioritize the health sector by providing the necessary machines and equipment to help save lives and boost service delivery and safety quality. On the other hand, healthcare employees need to be motivated to work and not feel neglected by ensuring their safety first and providing their salaries and medical allowances to curb activities like strikes. Some of the machines and equipment similar to the ones discussed above need to be cost-effective to allow developing countries to purchase them easily; health bodies and institutions should encourage benchmarking from various countries and frequently offer healthcare workers training.

References

Brown, C. L., Mulcaster, H. L., Triffitt, K. L., Sittig, D. F., Ash, J. S., Reygate, K., … & Slight, S. P. (2017). A systematic review of the types and causes of prescribing errors generated from using computerized provider order entry systems in primary and secondary care. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 24(2), 432-440.

Lumley, C., Ellis, A., Ritchings, S., Venes, T., & Ede, J. (2020). Using the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model to describe critical care nursing during the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic (2020). Nursing in critical care, 25(4), 203.

Schwendimann, R., Blatter, C., Dhaini, S., Simon, M., & Ausserhofer, D. (2018). The occurrence, types, consequences and preventability of in-hospital adverse events–a scoping review. BMC health services research, 18(1), 521.

Steele, M. L., Talley, B., & Frith, K. H. (2018). Application of the SEIPS Model to Analyze Medication Safety in a Crisis Residential Center. Archives of psychiatric nursing, 32(1), 7-11.

Werner, N. E., Rutkowski, R., Graske, A., Finta, M. K., Sellers, C. R., Seshadri, S., & Shah, M. N. (2020). Exploring SEIPS 2.0 as a model for analyzing care transitions across work systems. Applied Ergonomics, 88, 103141.