By Jeremiah Ongili and Beryl Okendo
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral (JOOTRH) marked the world patients safely day sensitizing its staff on medication without harm.
The event supported by the ministry of health also delved into ways of handling patients safely.
During the event, the Nursing Director Mrs. Teresa Okwiri, acknowledged that medical practitioners are humans who can errors. “At least 20 patients suffer from wrong prescriptions, let’s strive to always be careful when prescribing or administering medication to patients.” She urged colleagues.
She emphasized on the importance of drugs having clear labels from manufacturers and even in hospitals.
“Pharmacists should ensure that the correct drug is well labelled with its respective tag before it is kept on the pharmacy shelf or table for easy identification and to avoid errors during administration to the patients.” She added.
She also urged doctors and nurses who prescribe drugs or medication to be vigilant while doing so.
World Patient Safety Day is observed annually with the main aim of raising global awareness about patient safety and calling for solidarity and united action by all countries and international partners to reduce patient harm.
Patient safety focuses on preventing and reducing risks, errors, and harm that happen to patients during the provision of health care.
On reduction and mitigation of unsafe acts within the health care system, Dr. Neto Obala raised concern that about 1.3 million deaths annually are caused by a lack of patient safety, “Patient safety action areas need to be observed by medical practitioners.” He pointed out.
The objectives of world patient safely day 2022, were how to prevent healthcare-associated infections, how to improve the effectiveness of communication among caregivers, improve medication safety, how to use alarms safely, how to identify patient safety risks, and tips for improving patient safety in hospitals.
“Negative impacts of fatigue, rejection of advice from juniors, error on analysis system jacking, errors from the doctors and lack of ease to discuss mistakes also contribute to erroneous deaths.” Dr. Neto added.
The function had conversations on reasons for mistakes in healthcare, including multiple transfers of medical information, rapid pressure given to the health practitioners, a high number of patients to attend to, equipment failure, and the appearance of some drugs that some drugs are manufactured with the same shape and color making it difficult to differentiate them while under pressure or in a hurry.
Patient safety incident reporting forms are to be filled out by doctors to access and rectify mistakes for future service delivery for patients with disabilities.
In as much as humans are prone to error, doctors and other medical practitioners are advised to be at their best when delivering services and also purpose to do the right things.
Consultation is also very important and medical practitioners should seek guidance from their superiors.
