The giver identified the patient and explained the procedure to the patient before starting the procedure. Hospital stays can be confusing and stressful for patients and it’s very important to explain the plan of care and to educate patient to alleviate this stress. Patient should have a clear understanding of the procedure and have agreement and cooperation with the care giver. While this writer was watching the procedure, the caregiver forgot to wash her hands thoroughly before starting the procedure. This writer stopped the caregiver before she touched the patient’s dressing. This writer informed the caregiver the importance of hand washing. The caregiver washed her hands thoroughly with soap and water for fifteen seconds. She don clean gloves and carefully removed the old dressing and disposed in accordance with blood and body fluids and universal precautions. She then inspected the insertion site for any signs of infection like swelling, redness and exudates. Then she confirmed catheter placement, location, patency, and ensured the catheter is secure in place. The caregiver washed her hands again and opened the sterile dressing kit. The caregiver put on the mask and requested patient to keep face away from the dressing site. She then put on sterile gloves and cleaned the area as per policy. Allowed the area to dry and then Organizational Policies And Practices To Support Healthcare Issues Essay PaperRisk management professionals should not take lightly the complexity associated with providing healthcare services. While regulations, third-party payer requirements, and licensing/accreditation standards contribute to this complexity, formalized policies and procedures can mitigate it by promoting workplace safety, regulatory compliance, and the delivery of safe, high-quality patient care. Moreover, well-written, up-to-date policies and procedures reduce practice variability that my result in substandard care and patient harm. 

The operational challenges associated with drafting (and maintaining) comprehensive written policies place heavy demands on healthcare managers. Given increasing financial pressures and the top-priority status that must be given to direct patient care, managers may find it difficult to find time to review or update policies and procedures. Deferring policy and procedure development, however, may result in negative consequences. Policies and procedures may become outdated, and those who adhere to outdated policies may carry out actions that are no longer consistent with industry-recognized practices. Alternatively, they may simply elect to disregard the policy. Either choice may result in patient harm and a malpractice claim. Evidence that caregivers followed outdated policies may hinder defense of an otherwise defensible claim.Organizational Policies And Practices To Support Healthcare Issues Essay Paper

The Purpose of Policies and Procedures
Formalized, written policies and procedures fulfill a number of important purposes:

Facilitate adherence with recognized professional practices.
Promote compliance with regulations, statutes, and accreditation requirements (e.g. HIPAA, EMTALA, CMS Conditions of Participation, DNV/Joint Commission).
Reduce practice variation.
Standardize practices across multiple entities within a single a health system.
Serve as a resource for staff, particularly new personnel.
Reduce reliance on memory, which, when overtaxed, has been shown to be a major source of human errors or oversights.
These functions demonstrate how central policies and procedures are to the healthcare system’s patient safety program.Organizational Policies And Practices To Support Healthcare Issues Essay Paper

Definition of Terms
There is little agreement among healthcare regulators, accrediting bodies, and provider organizations about the definitions for terms such as policy, procedure, and guideline. The use of the word “policies” throughout this article shall refer to policies, procedures, and guidelines. The following definitions are based on the author’s experience.Organizational Policies And Practices To Support Healthcare Issues Essay Paper
Policy statement: A concise statement outlining the context, goal, or purpose of a specific procedure. A statement that is the guide to any decision making in relation to processes or activities that regularly take place or might be expected to occur (Hollnagel et al., 2014).
Procedure: The desired, intentional action steps to be taken by specified persons to achieve a certain objective in a defined set of circumstances.
Protocol: Synonymous with procedure. Often used when describing clinical patient care-related interventions. For example, a chemotherapy protocol or The Joint Commission’s Universal Protocol for Preventing Wrong Site, Wrong Procedure and Wrong Person Surgery.
Guideline: Recommended actions for a specific situation or type of case. A clinical practice guideline could, for example, outline blood-testing practices for patients who are taking anticoagulants.
Problematic Policies Organizational Policies And Practices To Support Healthcare Issues Essay Paper
When a domain unknowingly develops a policy or procedure that already exists—perhaps another domain issued a similar policy earlier—there will likely be differences, resulting in confusion as to which policy should be followed. Discrepancies in clinical policies may also result in allegations that leadership allowed “two levels of care” to be provided, thereby increasing the organization’s risk exposure in several ways. First, exposure may be triggered by inconsistency with The Joint Commission’s leadership accreditation standard, LD.04.03.07: Patients with comparable needs receive the same standard of care, treatment, and services throughout the hospital (Schyve, 2009). Second, and perhaps more importantly, if the treatment given in a specific case followed the less rigorous of the two policies, a plaintiff who suffered harm may allege that his/her care “did not fulfill the legal standard of care.”

Allegations may include:
A nurse’s or physician’s failure to adhere to policy.Organizational Policies And Practices To Support Healthcare Issues Essay Paper

Corporate negligence on behalf of a hospital that failed to adopt appropriate policies, adequately train the staff with regard to these policies, implement them, or evaluate how they are used (Destache, 2013).
The policy was inconsistent with the standard of care.
Policies the organization had in effect were contradictory to other organizational policies, differed across entities in the same system without a basis for the difference, or were inconsistent with applicable regulations. Organizational Policies And Practices To Support Healthcare Issues Essay Paper