Doctors across the country as well as across the world are considered to act in the best interest of patients. They are seen as working alone or in a team-formation delivering the care that is needed to alleviate the suffering. Their work since ages has given them the fame as well as the prestige that is shared by only handful of other professions including nursing and pharmacists.
The role of decision making by the doctors and nurses is becoming more and more complex because of increasing intricacies of the procedures, more solutions available to deal with healthcare issues, more complex equipment’s available, and increasing spectrum of the disease afflicting the patients.
We live in an era that it has become a challenge to attain the highest quality of care as well as assure safety for our patients. Complex procedures, complex equipments and constant production of new knowledge has posed a challenge those who are responsible to keep the medical profession safe from harm to the patients. These perceived harm come in very many ways. Its not just failing to act on time, or withholding any treatment that was needed by the patient, but also includes incomplete communication, missed identity, incomplete consent and so on and so forth. Patients trust the system to keep them away from unnecessary and avoidable harm, so the community of healthcare providers needed to create a system that is based upon quality of care and safety for the patients and staff. The society at large should demand safety from their healthcare providers whether the care is delivered at any private institution of Public hospital. Just because the patient is not paying out of their pocket them not negate their right to safe treatment.
There are different organizations which are mandated to ensure that the rights of patients for the safe treatment is respected, protected and ensured. These organizations are mostly ensuring the safety through retroactive looking into any complaints and holding people and institutions responsible for any mishap, wrong action or patient harm. There are other organizations which are proactive and more safety oriented in their thinking of preventing the error. These organizations ensure a culture of safety and mind set of improving those processes that can have the potential for harm.
All healthcare related institutions should be in the mode of improving their care for the safety of the patients. It is not just their duty to provide safe treatment to the patients, but also a legal and ethical requirement to do no harm. We are healthcare professional should always keep ourselves in the safety and quality mindset and should also be ready to change and adapt to provide better care to our patients.