AOI COO stresses patients' safety, spur workforce
Source: Chronicle News Service
Imphal, September 16 2021:
As the world is observing World Patient Safety Day on September 17 to increase public awareness and engagement, enhance global understanding, and spur global solidarity and action to promote patient safety, American Oncology Institute in collaboration with Babina Specialty Hospital, Imphal has been making various efforts to recognise patient safety as a priority and to empower the workforce at the hospital.
For the past one year and a half, the world has been in pandemic mode, and this has challenged and overwhelmed the safety issues in health care systems, ranging from equipping adequate PPEs, maintaining sanitation & hygiene, and supporting the front-line health care workers in serving and treating patients.
"Patient safety is our top priority, and we have successfully implemented Six International Patients Safety Goals (IPSG).
In order to ensure complete implementation, a system to monitor compliance is present across our network of 16 Cancer Hospitals of American Oncology Institute," said Dr Vijay Vemuri, Group Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the institute.
According to WHO, an estimated 134 million adverse events occur each year as a result of low-quality care in hospitals, resulting in approximately 2.6 million deaths.
Unfortunately, 40 per cent of patients are injured in ambulatory and primary care settings, with an estimated 80% of these harms being preventable.
Faisal Siddiqui, AVP Strategy and Operations, says, "We conduct facility audits and have devised mechanisms for capturing multiple Quality Indicators to quantify process gaps.
This is supported by a robust incident reporting mechanism that includes proper root cause analysis, which leads to corrective and preventive actions".
Every stakeholder of American Oncology Institute (AOI) is involved in the discussion of the indicators, best practices are shared and learned in the forums, and accountability for taking ownership is bestowed he conveyed.On this occasion, a team activity of IPSG booth was held in all locations of American Oncology Institute including Babina Speciality Hospital with the goal of advocating the adoption of best practices at the point of care to prevent avoidable risk and harm.
Teams came forward to represent the best practices for each International Patient Safety Goal (IPSG) in an educational and innovative manner.
Safety aspects, as well as the patient journey, were depicted, and leadership commitment was shared with the team in the form of a video.
"It represented our commitment towards high standards of care, quality, and safety.
There was a tremendous amount of learning, reinforcing our commitment to providing evidence-based cancer care with patient safety as, our top priority," said Saino Thomas, Group Chief Nursing Officer.