Prevention Strategies for Patient Safety in Hospitals: Methodical Paradigm, Managerial Perspective, and Artificial Intelligence Advancements

Abstract

Patient safety is fundamental to high-quality patient care. Hospitalization has its inherent complications. Medical errors can further comprise patient safety. Hospitals provides an opportunity for practicing preventive medicine. Two important areas are (i) making treatment and hospitalization free from side-effects (ii) obviating medical errors. In hospitals these can have serious consequences. Patient safety compromise can occur at the individual or system level. A methodical model for this should include (i) Intervention design (ii) Intervention implementation (iii) Intervention institutionalization. Managerial perspective important for leadership and team work. Leadership can energize excellence in the coordination and mobilization of the large number of inter-dependent processes and resources needed for achievement of patient safety. Three-dimensional strategy for Leadership is suggested (i) Initiatives appealing (ii) Integrating all (iii) Incremental advancements. The ‘Five Es’ for Teamwork, and the ‘Five Cs’ for Organizational Change are elaborated. Artificial Intelligence has the potential to improve healthcare safety. AI enables analysis of data from multiple sources simultaneously using advanced algorithms. This identifies predictors and outcomes. Ensemble learning algorithms, used by advanced practitioners of machine learning, are useful with high final accuracy. Hence in matters of health these should be utilized. All this will make prevention targeted, better, and timely.