If you run a nursing home, your number one goal should be to offer the highest level of professional care while ensuring 24-hour patient safety. This is never easy to achieve as you have to handle elderly and frail patients who need more attention than most age groups. Luckily, this is a challenge that you can conquer by having a robust system that enables you to guarantee maximum attention to all residents. Here, we look at five efficient ways of enhancing patient safety in a nursing home.
- Invest in a rapid response system
Older adults are vulnerable, and you can never ignore even the slightest problems, as they can quickly lead to a medical emergency. It could be a sudden feeling of dizziness at midnight or a fall accident, but regardless of the issue at hand, the need for instant medical attention remains constant. Since your nursing team can’t be with all patients each minute, a dependable solution is investing in monitoring technology. You need to take several factors into account when choosing a medical alert system, which is why professional reviews of these systems need to be your guide map.
- Engage your patients
Patient engagement and communication is an important pillar to running a successful nursing home. Seniors always want to be in an environment whereby their opinions are needed and respected, making it essential to actively involve them in their treatment and living needs. This means adopting an open communication model that allows all patients to speak up whenever they feel something is amiss. To avoid missing information, these concerns need to quickly get to the top management for instant resolution.
- Have a safety compliance plan
You need to develop and implement a safety compliance plan to actively monitor and evaluate how well employees follow established best practices. Neglect in nursing homes is becoming prevalent as nursing teams often feel like patients exaggerate their needs and conditions. The only way to avoid these situations is by maintaining compliance programs as they help ensure everyone is onboard with your overall vision.
- Promote family and caregiver engagement
Family plays an important role when it comes to the well-being of elderly patients. Most seniors often feel lonely when they are not around their loved ones, and adjusting to life in a nursing home can be challenging. A common trend in most nursing homes in patients who are more willing to discuss their needs with a family member than caregivers. Promoting family and caregiver engagement solves this problem as you will get to timely know all pressing concerns from your patients.
- Promote a team atmosphere
You need to make your nursing home feel like home by emphasizing honesty and teamwork. When everyone gets involved in ensuring overall safety, you have very little to worry about. Active involvement in patient safety needs to be cut across the board as this is the only way to avoid errors and preventable incidents.
Endnote
A lot goes into ensuring patient safety in a nursing home, and without the right strategies, you are bound to fail. These are some of the most practical ways to help protect all elderly patients under your care.
The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.
