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Reduction of Risk Potential
Patient safety is one of the central themes that has dominated patient care in the last decades. Therefore, healthcare professionals in hospitals and primary healthcare take part in various initiatives to ensure that patients are offered safe and efficient care. In addition, various nursing organizations that are stakeholders in nurse training, such as the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, ensure that when the trainer nurses are tested after training, the tests cover key areas in patient care (Denman & Cohn, 2022). For example, The National Council Licensure Examination covers four main areas, such as assurance of a safe and effective care environment. One of the priority topics related to the mentioned NCLEX-RN examination blueprint is the reduction of risk potential. These two are related in that when the healthcare professionals reduce the risk potentials among patients, then the patients are assured of safety and hence better outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of this assignment is to explore the importance of reduction of risk potential, healthcare disparities, inequalities, and interventions. In addition, this paper will focus on legal and ethical considerations, potential challenges, participants and interdisciplinary approach, and quality improvement.
The Importance of Reduction of Risk Potential
Risk can take many forms in the hospital and primary health care environments. For example, patients are usually at risk of falls, medication errors, equipment failure, diagnostic errors, errors associated with providers, and indwelling device infections (McGowan et al., 2022). All these risks can lead to adverse events if not well managed and taken care of. Therefore, it is important to come up with effective strategies to manage the risks. Even though risk management can be complex, they are key in helping hospitals and primary health care centers in detecting, assess, mitigating, and preventing risks to patients. The final outcome could be a substantial reduction of risk potential hence better patient outcomes; without a reduction of risk potential, the incidences of patient harm increase hence higher healthcare spending, adverse events, and even death (Redding et al., 2018). Reduction of risk potential is also key to the nursing profession as it reduces the chances of potential litigation due to patient harm in the care environment. Participating in risk reduction also enables the nurses to fulfill their ethical and professional obligation to enhance patient safety. Failure to participate in activities that reduce risk potential may taint the profession’s image and lead to litigations, especially when patients get harmed and die in the care environment.
Healthcare Disparities, Inequality, and Intervention.
As earlier discussed, there are several forms of risk. One of them is medication errors. While any patient can experience medication error, one of the populations which can heavily be affected by the problem if not resolved are individuals with comorbidities hence having to practice polypharmacy. Recent data indicate that these patients have medication error rates of up to 56% (Fernholm et al., 2020). Health care resources can be key in supporting evidence-based professional practice regarding the reduction of risk potential such as medication errors. Among the resources are standards of practice which entail double checks to verify patients, medication names, medication calculations, and routes. Professionals can effectively use these practice guidelines to reduce the risk of medication errors and potential harm occurring.
The reduction of risk potential is also related to healthcare disparities and inequalities. For example, the risks are higher among more vulnerable patients, such as patients with single or multiple chronic conditions. Such patients are more prone to adverse events such as medica
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