Summary
Healthcare environments are inherently dangerous. Much has been written about patient and staff safety, but incidences of harm continue every day. Nurses continue to hunt and gather for supplies, equipment and medications, resulting in long travel distances and fatigue – increasing the potential for medical errors. Patients are injured as a result of falls, medication errors and infections. Our healthcare environments intrinsically pose many obstacles to safe and efficient care.
Purpose of Presentation:
This presentation will discuss the most common areas involving potentially dangerous, inefficient, and unsafe care practices and how the physical environments we design dictate behaviors and work patterns. Design can – and must – ensure patient and staff safety. This presentation will outline processes needed to reduce medical errors and injuries, and share design concepts to support these safe and efficient care practices. (1 Continuing Education Unit)
Learning Objectives
1. Learn the processes needed to reduce medical errors and injuries.
2. Review the relationship between care processes and the impact the built environment has on those processes.
3. Gain the knowledge needed to design safe, effective, and efficient care environments that will promote the delivery of safe patient care practices and enhance staff wellbeing.
This one-hour session is conducted by various Herman Miller Healthcare staff.