Why Is Patient Safety Important

 What is patient safety?
Patient safety is the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of health care (WHO 2004). These could include “errors”, “deviations “and “accidents “. Achieving patient safety involves the interaction of all the system components; never residing only in person, device, or department. It is the core of health care quality. According to the Joint Commission Patient Safety (2004 through 2011). Miscommunication was listed as one of the top contributing cause for sentinel events; posing risks of the safety of caregivers and patients alike.

 Epidemiology:
According to a report on the NHS hospitals in the UK in 2014-2015 (Mellor,2015):
• 35% of all complaints were attributed to poor communication.
• 71%
1- Improvement of communication skills:
Physicians are not born with the talent of excellent communications, but with knowing and understanding the theory of the effective doctor-patient communication, they can improve their skills in a way that they reach to an excellent communication with the patients to overcome the obstacles that lead to miscommunications between the doctor and the patient. This will need the physicians to learn the important skills in history taking, breaking bad news and explanations. However, these skills can lapse with time. So, regular learning of the new skills and regular feedback on the acquired skills can help to maintain the skills.
Some tips which can work in the history and the explanations are asking about open questions with empathy and asking the patients about their concerns, perceptions and their expectation. Using simple words and concepts which are suitable for the community can help to deliver the information clearly to the patient. Also, attentive listening to the patient talk is an important skill which can help in establishing a good rapport with the patient and avoid missing of any valid information from the patient.

2- Collaborative
So, what are the types of these patients and how to manage them in order for us to communicate with them effectively? First type is a dependent clinger type of patient where they are insecure, needy for assurance and usually in their first medical session, they try to kindle feelings of sympathy in the physician by being emotional, vulnerable and desperate. However, later on in subsequent sessions, they take more time than the allocated to them and become needier to physicians. In this situation, physicians should maintain professionalism, reassure the patient that they will provide the treatment they are capable of and regularly follow them up. Second type of patients are the entitled demander who are often characterized by being hostile, angry, aggressive and even rude to physicians and nursing staff. The issue with these patients is that they refuse to go through the steps of management and can infuriate the physicians. Therefore, physicians should not react defensively to them and ensure the patient that they will receive their righteous care (Lorenzetti, 2013). Like exactly in our case Which is exactly similar to what happened in our