To promote effective quality care and patient safety, the Joint Commision’s National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) seventh set went into effect last January 1, 2009. All Joint Commission-accredited organizations are now held responsible to comply with the current and revised NPSGs.
Nurses should be updated on such revisions to ensure that they are on target with patient safety and tailor their nursing interventions accordingly. In this article, all 2009 NPSGs for the hospital, ambulatory, and office-based surgery accreditation programs, with an emphasis on how they affect nurses in the perioperative areas are highlighted.
Nurses and Patient Safety Goals
Though some of these guidelines or goals, like patient IDs and fall precautions, are already commonly addressed in institutions, being familiarized with the new NPSGs fosters better compliance in all areas of patient care. Some goals, however, may be a little more difficult to implement.
One safety goal requires a standardized list of abbreviations, acronyms, symbols. It includes standardized dose designations which applies to both hand-written and electronic documentation and includes all forms of perioperative communication, such as:
- surgical preference or procedure cards
- surgical procedure lists
- perioperative documentation
- progress notes
- consents
- patient’s history and physical exam
Cited in the article is this example, “An elderly patient was ordered hydromorphone (Dilaudid); however, the order was written without the use of leading zeros (for example, .2 mg). As a result, the order was misread as 2 mg instead of the intended 0.2 mg. The nurse recognized the error after giving the initial dose. The patient experienced no ill effects.”
Even though each standard comes with an element of procedure (EP), which may make it more difficult to comply with, the NPSGs are considered to be “minimum standards” and organizations are expected to comply with all applicable standards.
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Need help with Med Math or Dosing Calculations?
One common issue in patient safety is medication dosing and medication math.
Many nurses and nursing students will find this site, MedMathSimplified.com a great resource for tutorials on medication math. Check out the free resources there as well as info on how to order the online tutorial or DVD.
