by John Fulmer

Improving patient safety is one of the most urgent issues facing healthcare today. And according to the American Hospital Association, delivering the right care at the right time in the right setting is the core mission of hospitals across the country. To support this agenda, a new 3-part video series is now available from Milner-Fenwick to help patients experience a safe and secure hospital stay.

Titled Hospital Quality of Care, the series includes:

• Patient Safety: Stay Safe While You Are in the Hospital
• Advance Directive: Taking Control
• Pain Management: It’s Your Right

The series is designed to help already weary, distracted, or anxious patients become active participants in their own care during their stay. They learn how to reduce safety risks, prevent hospital-borne illness, and participate in pain management and end-of-life contingency decisions.

“Staff members are going to come into a patient’s room and ask lots of questions. Patients need to know that it’s important to be honest and that their answers are a confidential part of their personal medical record.”

Achieving core education objectives

The patient safety and advance directive programs were developed as part of a hospital’s overall core education efforts. They can be used by patient-safety officers, risk managers, and health educators. They present pertinent information to fulfill Joint Commission guidelines for patient education and help achieve Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goals,

“We’re not trying to overwhelm patients. We want to give them an idea of what to expect once they’re admitted,” said JoAnne Nabozny, Product Development Director.

“Staff members are going to come into a patient’s room and ask lots of questions. Patients need to know that it’s important to be honest and that their answers are a confidential part of their personal medical record. These videos follow the Joint Commission’s Speak Up program guidelines.”

According to Carrie Beaudoin, the series producer, a spotlight has been trained on educational materials as part of the effort to lower time spent in the hospital and to keep return visits to a minimum.

Safety first

With the emphasis on patient participation, Patient Safety: Stay Safe While You Are in the Hospital teaches hospital safety strategies as simple as wearing traction-soled slippers and proper wristbands at all times, advising visitors and staff to wash hands, and tracking meal trays and medications.

A major and often controversial aspect of safety is The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) 2008 decision to declare 10 categories of hospital “preventables” as non-reimbursable events.

Patients who suffer fractures and other injuries in falls are a particularly common and expensive safety issue on this list. One dilemma is that hospitals are now saddled with additional patient-safety responsibility for falls while still maintaining a goal of getting patients ambulatory as soon as possible.

With this in mind, Beaudoin says, “To decrease the likelihood of falls, the video presents tips for patients to safely move about their rooms as well as walking in the hallway as part of their rehab.”

“One dilemma is that hospitals are now saddled with additional patient-safety responsibility for falls while still maintaining a goal of getting patients ambulatory as soon as possible.”

Personal choice

Patients learn in Advance Directive: Taking Control that they can have some degree of control if they become too ill or injured to convey their wishes. It details:

• decisions about end-of-life care
• decisions about care meant to keep a patient alive
• healthcare power of attorney

Beaudoin explains, “These are often steps that people avoid taking because of the difficult emotional and medical issues they raise. However when they go through the process, the result of a completed advance directive is peace of mind for the patient and his or her loved ones.

“One of our goals was to get people of all ages to do this. It’s not something to put off until you’re older. Accidents and illness can happen when you’re young, so you want to be in control of your decisions.”

Communication and options control pain

Pain Management: It’s Your Right is an update of a previous release. This 14-minute video defines chronic and acute pain, the importance for patients to communicate their pain level to healthcare providers, and explains patients’ rights about pain management.

As with the original release, there is detailed information about patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) for medications and opioids.

According to Beaudoin, “We also present non-traditional alternatives including prayer, positive thinking, meditation and massage. There are people who don’t want to take drugs or have past addictions. So these people are receptive to different types of non-medication pain relief.”

Two related programs to this series are Pneumonia: Diagnosis and Treatment and Pneumonia: Recovery and Prevention.