Exam 15: Informatics Tools to Promote Patient Safety and Quality Outcomes

Radio frequency identifier technologies have both supply chain and patient care applications to patient safety.

Organizations themselves can engage in root-cause analysis or failure modes and effects analysis to examine medical errors closely and to determine the system processes that need to be changed to prevent similar future errors.

A nurse is teaching a nursing student on the role of safety in health information technology. Which statement by the nurse is correct?

A staff nurse consistently exhibits disregard for established policies and procedures in an organization where there is just culture. Which statement by the nurse manager is correct about a just culture?

Smart pump technologies are designed to promote safe administration of high-hazard drugs.

When someone disregards established policies and procedures, it is thought of as reckless behavior.

A physician is entering a medication order for aspirin and an alert is generated, reminding the physician that the patient is allergic to salicylic acid, and lists alternative medications. This alert is known as which of the following?

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, one way to balance the competing cultural values of blamelessness versus accountability is to establish a "just culture."

A nurse is preparing to administer a medication and scans the patient's bar code and the medication bar code in the electronic medication administration system. This bar-code technology supports patient safety by ensuring which of the following?

A nurse is reading research on safety initiatives and reviews initiatives from which agency?

Organizational leaders must drive the culture change by making a visible commitment to safety and by enabling staff to share safety information openly. Some of the strategies suggested by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement include appointing a safety champion for every unit, creating an adverse event response team, and reenacting or simulating adverse events to better understand the organizational or procedural processes that failed.

Clinical decision making is guided by targeted information delivery ensuring that the five rights of clinical decision support are implemented: the right information provided to the right person in the right format through the right channel at the right time in workflow.

A safety culture is a blame-free environment where individuals are able to report errors or near misses without fear of reprimand or punishment. Conversely, a just culture emphasizes individual accountability and:

Automated medication dispensing devices promote patient safety through access security, safety, supply chain, and charge functions.

A nurse administrator is reviewing data from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on patient safety and develops a database for medical errors and near misses in the healthcare facility. This database addresses which gap that was recognized by the GAO?

Identify a workaround that you have used and analyze why you chose this risk-taking behavior over behavior that conforms to a safety culture.

Once the technology is integrated into the organization, biomedical engineers can become valuable partners in promoting patient safety through appropriate use of these technologies.

A healthcare organization creates a blame-free environment in which staff member can report error and commit additional resources to address safety concerns. This organization is said to have a:

An error in medication administration occurs, resulting in an adverse patient outcome. The organization reviews system processes that need to be changed so that similar errors are avoided in the future. This process is known as a:

The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 mandated the creation of a national database of medical errors and funded several organizations to analyze these data with the goal of developing shared learning to prevent medical errors.