Anticoagulant Research Paper

The Joint Commission focuses on certain goals each year. For patient safety and positive outcomes, hospitals are required to follow certain standards. National Patient Safety Goals were established in 2002 to help identify areas of concern with patient safety. This group is made up by a panel of experts including nurses, doctors, pharmacists and many other healthcare professionals. They advise the Joint Commission on how to address these different patient safety issues. Two goals to be discussed are improving the accuracy of patient identification and medication safety. To improve patient

The Priority Focus Area of Communication includes 3 Joint Commission (JC) standards relative to Universal Protocol. These 3 standards, which are components of the National Patient Safety Goals, are aimed at ensuring the correct

"To continuously improve health care for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value” (Jointcommission.org, 2015). These requirements are regimented in the National Patient Safety Goals and are enforced via surveys and internal inspections to ensure that healthcare institutions abide by the safety mechanisms put in place to facilitate the optimal patient outcomes and environments.

The National Patient Safety Goals were first developed in 2002 by the Joint Commission. The goals are established to help guide medical organizations to focus on which areas of patient safety need improving (Hudson 2016). The first set of goals were released and put in motion in 2003, prior to 2003 there were no policies or goals for an organization to set their sights on (Hudson 2016 page 2). A panel of experts advises the Joint Commission on the development of new goals or the updating of old ones. The panel is called the Patient Safety Advisory Group and is made up of nurses, risk managers, clinical engineers, and physicians (Hudson 2016). The National Patient Safety Goals have specific goals geared toward the type of medical organizations such as a critical access hospital, home care, behavioral health, and long term care services to name a few (Hudson 2016 page 2). The National Patient Safety Goals help protect patients and make sure providers are practicing safely across the board.

The Joint Commission is a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving the Healthcare system. They do this by regulating and evaluating health care organizations, helping them improve and give a more effective and safe care (The Joint Commission, 2012). The National Patient safety goals are ways in which the joint commission strives to improve the way health care is provided (The Joint Commission, 2012). Effective on January 1, 2012, the Joint commission came up with new ways to improve the Care of Medicare Based Long term Care facilities and provided Safety regulations to be followed. In order to better understand the impact that this regulations

As the Joint Commission aims to nationally improve health care systems through health care organizations collaborations, it publishes recommended patient safety goals. As stated by the Joint Commission, “the first obligation of health care is to “do no harm””. The Joint Commission’s 2015 National Patient Safety Goals for hospitals include : Identify patients correctly; Improve staff communication; Use

The Joint Commission also addresses safety issues through the publication and distribution of the Sentinel Event which identifies a severe breach in safety and addresses ways on how to improve processes and to prevent harm in the future. It also publishes the National Patient Safety Goals which address healthcare safety and ways to solve problems that focus on issues such as identifying patients correctly, improving communication among staff, and administering medications safely, just to name a few. “A majority of Joint Commission standards are directly related to safety, addressing such issues as medication use, infection control, surgery and anesthesia, transfusions, restraint and seclusion, staffing and staff competence, fire safety, medical equipment, emergency management, and security. The standards also include requirements for preventing accidental harm; responding to patient safety events; and the organization’s responsibility to tell patients about the outcomes of their care” (TJC,

All these priorities focus on the national patients safety goal as the most important in patient management and treatment, and guide the hospitals toward appropriate policies and protocols to follow and to minimize any possible mistakes or patients harm. I choose the priority focus area of Communication to discuss the current compliance status of our organization concentrating on the standards, which did not meet the Joint

Patient safety one of the driving forces of healthcare. Patient safety is defined as, “ the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of healthcare or as the prevention of errors and adverse events caused by the provision of healthcare rather than the patient’s underlying disease process. (Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, &Turunen, 2013)”. It was just as important in the past as it is day. Our healthcare field continues to strive to make improvement toward safer care for patients across the country.

2012 Joint Commission Patient Safety Goals. (n.d.). Retrieved January 2014, from Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center: www.lovell.fhcc.va.gov/about/2012PatientSafetyGoals.pdf

This paper will explore the benefits and risks of routine use of aspirin therapy in the treatment of vascular disease and prevention of its concurrent complications.

Antiplatelet therapy is the cornerstone of cardiovascular disease treatment. Clopidogrel in conjunction with aspirin has been shown to decrease cardiovascular mortality, repeat vascular events and stent thrombosis. As with any other antiplatelet agent, the increased risk of bleeding is the most common important complication of concern for physicians and patients alike. However, another important and possibly fatal condition to keep in mind is TTP.

The occurrence of a stroke has been noted to happen in multiple patients previously diagnosed with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation and “It is now accepted that nonvalvular fibrillation is an important cause of stroke” (Landfeld, 1997). A drug that works similarly to Eliquis called Warfarin, has been used to prevent strokes in patients with this disease. Clinical trials showed “treatment with Warfarin sufficient to attain an international normalized ratio in the range of 2.0 to 3.0 reduced the annual rate of stroke by two-thirds-from 4.5% to 1.4% -without a substantial increase in the incidence of hemorrhage.9” (Landefeld,1997). The relationship between this cardiac disorder and the likelihood of a stroke caused by the manifestation of a blood clot, and the ability of Eliquis to reduce this factor, is the reason a doctor would start a patient on a regimen of this particular

NSAIDs can lead to an increased risk of adverse cardiovascular thrombotic events, including MI and stroke. Platelet adhesion and aggregation may be decreased with Naproxen, prolonging bleeding time. Hematologic side effects induced by Naproxen include platelet dysfunction resulting in increased bleeding times, decreased hematocrit, eosinophilia, granulocytopenia, neutropenia, leukopenia, thrombocytopenia, and agranulocytosis. Due to hematologic side effects, a complete blood count and coagulants must be monitored closely (Lexi-Comp,

Atrial Fibrillation, a heart condition that causes irregular beating, can result in blood clots. A possible treatment seemed to be through anticoagulation, which would thin the blood and decrease the likelihood of blood clots. “Bad medicine: Atrial fibrillation”, published in the British Medical Journal, discusses how medicine can become reactive rather than proactive as it states, “if the anticoagulation numbers are wrong then we risk the slow growing of a perfect storm of overtreatment, iatrogenic harm, and bad medicine”(Spence). A serious risk factor for taking an anticoagulant would be difficulty stopping and slowing down bleeding. Minor injuries such as falls or cuts could be deadly to a patient on an anticoagulant. Losses of lives, such as David Barker’s, could have been prevented if the approach to treatment would have focused on fixing the irregular beating rather than chance of blood clots, which only tries to alleviate a side effect of the condition. Through Popper’s perspective on the elements of precise support of theories and Butler’s ideas on how to improve research, we can understand why