Healthcare professional benefit from patient-safety course
DPI, GUYANA, Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Minister within Ministry of Public Health Dr. Karen Cummings urged healthcare professionals to adopt the approved evidence-based practices as a way to achieve maximum patient safety.
The call for patient safety measures was made by the minister when she opened a Patient-Safety Course at the Parc Rayne Inn, East Bank Demerara, on Wednesday, May 16.
Minister Cummings said patient safety is the cornerstone of providing quality healthcare. Therefore, she added it is important that the participants adopt the measures for application in their respective areas. She reminded that nurses play a critical role in patient safety since they part of the surveillance and coordination that reduce adverse outcomes.
“We believe that avoiding medication errors and preventing pitfalls cover the extent to which we deal with patient safety. However, while these dimensions of safety remain important within the nursing purview the length and breadth of patient safety and quality improvement is far greater”, Minister Cummings explained.
Paediatrician and President of the ‘Guyana Help the Kids’ organisation Dr. Narendra Singh said a cultural change is needed. He described this initiative as a step forward to ensuring healthcare professionals implement these necessary measures.
“This is truly fertile ground to begin a process of tackling patient safety; a process of defining the problem, creating awareness of the issues around patient safety, implementing time proven measures and measure it,” Dr. Singh added.
Patient safety is the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of health care and reduction of risk of unnecessary harm associated with healthcare to an acceptable minimum.
This patient-safety course is a collaborative effort between the Public Health Ministry, Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) and Guyana Help the Kids organisation.
By Neola Damon
Images courtesy of Jules Gibson