Discussion

Write a 175- to 265-word response to the following:

• Imagine you are talking to a friend. How would you explain the concept of risk management and how it relates to quality management in the health care industry?
• respond to part A & B below. 175 words each. you’re responding to other students. 

A:

Risk management is the process of analyzing processes and practices that are put in place , such as identifying risk factors, and implementing procedures that address those risks. RIsk management in healthcare means the difference between life and death which makes the stakes increasingly higher . In some cases risk management in the healthcare field is more important than in any other industry. There are several different risks in healthcare such as faulty equipment, medical malpractice and other hazards. Making sure that you manage these risks is important within the healthcare industry to make sure that your patients are safe and secure and also keep costs down. Risk based thinking enables organizations to determine the factors that could cause its processes and its quality management system to deviate from the planned results, to put in place preventative measures to minimize negative effects, and to make maximum use of opportunities as they rise. This is done to try and control the costs and providing quality patient care. When explaining to my friend I would let them know that risk management is a major role in healthcare and that this is what they need to focus on when providing patient care and keeping their patients safe.

B:

Human beings are fallible by nature; we make mistakes; nobody is perfect! Our processes or systems may also be flawed which also contributes to errors in the workplace. However, our workplace in health care, where we are performing complex processes as we are caring for people in an extremely vulnerable state, presents an environment where risks leading to these medical errors can have devastating effects on peoples lives both short-term and long-term; it can cost them their life.

Therefore, we have to foster an environment based on a culture of safety, where we can work as a cohesive organizational team to identify risks and determine ways to collect data that allows for a concerted effort to mitigate that risk. This culture of safety must embrace a candid transparency of the fallacies present so that issues or events that occur can be used to learn from, and work can be done to prevent them from reoccurring in the future through continuous quality improvement initiatives. Risk management promotes the organizations’s ability to recognize there is both a cost associated with medical errors and with preventing them; therefore; we must learn how to balance these costs and the safety of the patients or employees within the organization. Risk management focuses on mitigating both potential unwanted events and actual adverse or even worse sentinel events by using focused process improvement, analysis and education, standardization, and learning from our own mistakes or mistakes of others. However, risk is merely mitigated or controlled, it can never be eliminated and therefore we must continually strive for the ideal future state through focused risk management methods.

Class,

What is one or two things an organization might specifically do to mitigate risk? What might an organization do in response to a sentinel adverse event to prevent it from happening again?