Checklists
Complexity and its Solution
What do medicine, construction, and aeronautics have in common? They are complex fields that have grown so much since their creation that it is nearly impossible to master everything involved in their respective. To consider the growth look no further than the medical field. Atul Gawande, in The Checklist Manifesto, points out the extreme growth in medicine using Harvard Vanguard, a medical clinic founded in 1969, as an example:
To keep up with the explosive growth in medical capabilities, the clinic has had to build more than twenty facilities and employ some six hundred doctors and a thousand other health professionals covering fifty-nine specialties, many of which did not exist when the clinic first opened…. To handle the complexity, we’ve split up the tasks among various specialties. But even divvied up, the work can become overwhelming. (20)
Harvard Vanguard has not simply had to hire twenty new doctors, it has had to open twenty entire facilities. Fifty-nine new specialties have been created in less a little more than forty years. Since medicine has grown so much and has become
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Checklists are to ensure mistakes are not made, they should not be a distraction. If a checklist is too long, Gawande states, they become a distraction. Steps get missed or skipped and mistakes get made, so keep the checklist short. It should be five to nine items (Gawande 123). That might seem difficult, if there is a field where a checklist is needed in the first place, won’t the checklist have to be long? The short answer is no; the long answer is to only keep those items that the expert never fails to do. The “killer items” are the items that are dangerous not to do yet are somehow overlooked. Pilots, for example, never fail to let the stewardess know what is happening in an emergency situation, so that does not need to be included in a checklist
Select an allied health care profession and provide a description of the jobs and services provided by that profession. Research regulatory or professional organizations that serve the profession you chose, and describe an area in which the profession seeks to improve or expand. In what other ways might the profession grow to better serve the ever-changing health care population?
The bank crash of 1930 wiped out a young man's entire savings, destroying his dream of going to medical school. However, this didn't stop him from going on to revolutionize the medical profession.
Throughout this course I have learned about the various challenges that impede productivity and efficiency at today’s hospitals. These issues facing the modern healthcare organization come in varying forms from technological, staffing, and financial to name a few. There are no limits to what hospitals can face in these modern technologically savvy times. Below are the major issues that today’s hospitals are facing, though there are many facets to these topics it will be described as best as possible to meet overall challenges:
When people think of health care, they often think up images from their own experiences in doctors' offices, clinics, and hospitals. Then there are the images of intense drama and hustling and bustling in hospitals and emergency rooms such as those presented on television and in the movies. These are all part of the health care arena, but it extends far beyond the emergency room. Health care agencies and governmental agencies mission is to improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of
Gawande overall, states the importance of using a checklist in his book The Checklist Manifesto connecting to the problem of extreme complexity. In this modern world complexity can hit hard and danger patients for example, the medical field. Medicine becomes complex as there can be ways on how medicine is prepared or when it needs to be used. Handling complexity brings up a solution that splits up tasks and gives the tasks to different specialties. However as mention in The Checklist Manifesto, “But even divided up, the work can become over whelming (Gawande 20). This can get worst as team work and communication can be disrupted. The different specialists might be seen as a hierarchy which can worsen communication to the point where a doctor doesn’t follow a nurse’s suggestion for the idea that a doctor knows what they are doing.
There are many components to a hospital or medical facility. All of them are necessary to have a properly functioning environment. The emergency department of a hospital is a fast paced world. You have to be constantly on your toes and prepared for whatever may come through the doors. There are many people that work in an emergency room to make it run smoothly. Techs, nurses, CNA’s, LVN’s, and doctors all work side by side to help those who are critically injured. Without all these people it would be complete chaos.
Advances in medical science and technology still have force and effect on how our health care system has and will evolve over time. We have a technologically driven health care system. Our educational system shapes our health care system through its training methods and emphasis on the medical model. Depending on the discipline, training may key on treating rather than preventing disease. This generates demand for service delivery. Training of new physicians takes time and money. Because the costs for a medical education are significant, many students seek postgraduate training in a
They can commit to excellence by creating a great working environment for physicians; through efforts such as having plenty of medical supplies in the hospital and offering reasonable pay. When there are available equipment physicians, and other hospital staff remain motivated to carry out their duties and, therefore, will put effort to excel in all their duties; to promise patient satisfaction. Again, medical facilities can create excellence by having a suitable environment for continued learning; seeing as the medical world is full of new discoveries and research findings. Continued learning ensures that the practices that physicians undertake remain important; thereby ensuring that patients feel that they receive high quality services when they visit a hospital (Marley, 2004,
One of the major goals of the Mayo Clinic is to provide outstanding care to patients and to offer superior education programs that ensure the success to all who attend. The name Mayo Clinic comes from Dr. William Worrall Mayo and his sons. They invited physicians as well as students to visit and learn about their innovative and surgical practice. Not only were the Mayo brothers distinguished scholars but they also traveled and to learn from others and bring back the latest in medical developments so that they could bring it back to their own practice. The Mayo Clinic is ranked #1 in the Nation and many people come from all over the receive treatment here. As the Mayo Clinic continues to grow and integrate the importance of education is still the central focus. In 1915 the Mayo Clinic partnered with the University of Minnesota and developed the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education and by 1917 the first graduate degrees in Mayo’s programs were conferred to two women and two men.
New discoveries spawn more medical research in medical colleges. In 1910, Abraham Flexner of the Carnegie Foundation publishes his study on medical education, and induces major medical education reform. Medical knowledge flourishes and specialists account for 20% of physicians in 1940. Hospitals begin to embellish new medical technology as physicians relied on the hospital as a source of access to new technology and as a facility in which to care for their sickest patients. (Writer, Dominguez, 2011, 2-6)
The decline in hospital capacity was accompanied by a rise in staffing. Full-time equivalent personnel rose (Malagi & Kamath, 2016). Most of the additional personnel in hospitals are not focused on patient care but management or administration purposes. The American Hospital Association data shows that outpatient department visits have risen per 1,000 persons indicating that capacity for ambulatory services has risen overtime. Emergency departments have reduced with a larger percentage of closures being in rural areas. Compared to hospitals, physicians have continued to increase. Specialists have increased except for radiologists and general surgeons. There is, however, an uneven distribution of physicians between rural and urban areas. There is an estimated shortage of 3,000 physicians in nonmetropolitan areas. In addition to an increase in physicians, there are new forms of acute-care facilities. There are relatively new facilities that have been accredited. Ambulatory surgery centers have, for instance, risen (Best et al.,
operate as a service provider. From this I will be able to gain a greater understanding of patient care. This collaboration between disciplines and the resulting improvement for the patient was identified by Hill (2006). Since I have started working within the NHS over the last year, I have had more opportunities to work with members of different professions both in the NHS and voluntary sector. This experience has helped me develop a better understanding of how patient care is made up of a multitude of smaller parts.
For this essay I will be reflecting on the influences on, how the role of the operating department practitioner (ODP) has developed within the multi-professional healthcare team. I will also be discussing in this text some of the historical, political, legal, social, and cultural influences of the ODP. And I will be reflecting on my personal experience working within the operating department for the first time as a student, using the Gibbs cycle (1988.).
Medical education has changed excessively throughout the years. Physicians in the 18th century had no knowledge of
The flow of the medical community is dependent on every person employed there. The harmony it creates does not only come from the doctors or nurses, but the janitors, surgeons, receptionists, and even the pharmacists. Each job is necessary in order for the hospitals to function properly; for instance, the doctors diagnose the patient with their illness, prescribe them medication to cure it, and send them to the pharmacist, who then gives them their medication and sends them home. However, some jobs are overlooked more than others and do not receive the proper credit, like the pharmacist. Pharmacists are recognized for dispensing and sorting drugs, but their jobs help educate patients over their prescription and uphold the