Patient identification and prevention of patient misidentification as a standard of patient safety in health care process
Autori:
Anita Lukić, Dubravka Dobec-Gorenak
Sažetak
Summary
Patient safety is one of the basic guidelines for high-quality implementation of healthcare. Increasing the safety of the health care system results in a lower rate of unwanted events, which makes patients safer from mistakes that can happen to them in the health care system. One of the possible unwanted events in the health care system is patient misidentification. Although we often deal with the problem of patient misidentification only after such unwanted event has already taken place, it is crucial to prevent it from happening. There are a number of ways to reduce the risk of patient misidentification. The choice of the most appropriate way for the prevention of patient misidentification, the possibility of implementation in everyday practice, as well as the use of electronic systems depend on the specificity of the system itself in which a certain method is planned to be applied. Also, the development and the nurturing of safety culture is one of the key factors for preventing patient misidentification. The awareness of both patients and staff about the importance of identity confirmation is the most important factor in the prevention of patient misidentification. The reporting of problems related to accurate patient identification, as well as the reporting of near miss events and their analysis are key to preventing these events in the future.