Stop making sense: Normalizing abnormality…
A brief foray this week, though I hope that is very much in keeping with you all being able to grab a few moments for yourselves over the holiday weekend. It was rather dreary up here in the land of the New English, but the rain is much needed, so if there was a bit of dampening of the spirits, it should take the edge off any fire risks up this way. I would be happy to share with the more parched regions of the country, but it appears that rain (like many other things) is rather more capricious than not…
First up: If you have not had the opportunity to get back to the grind that is the hunt for expiring/expired product, please remember that a ton of products were purchased about a year ago and it does seem like I’ve been running into a bunch of stuff that is reaching the end of its (sometimes not so) useful life. Wipes and sanitizer proliferated quite extensively last spring into early summer, so make sure someone in your organization is worrying about that one.
Next up, the only EC-related item in the June edition of Perspectives (and it is a little bit of a stretch) deals with the Sentinel Event Alert on infusion pump safety. It seems somehow that improvements to medical equipment technology manage to create more challenges for the folks in clinical engineering. The more a device can do, the more stuff that can go wrong. This is not to say that these are in any way a problem in and of themselves, but it seems like there are always gaps in the education process when these things roll out, so best of luck on that front. Medication safety is clearly going to be a focus moving forward and if we have learned nothing over the last little while is that everything ties across the physical environment eventually.
As a closing reiteration (we did touch upon this a couple of weeks ago), just a reminder to try and capture as much of the last year as you can. Many (if not most) of the lessons learned are pretty hard-wired into our response protocols, etc., but it’s also important to take stock of what didn’t work particularly well so we can avoid repeats in the future. One of the consistent challenges I’ve noted over the years is when an organization learns of a process, etc., that has worked really well at another organization and adopts that process lock, stock, and barrel. And a lot of times, that “perfect” process involved a fair amount of stumbling around to get to the point of perfection—and for some reason, folks don’t always share the missteps. It reminds me of that oft-told aphorism regarding doom and repeating history, but let us leave doom to others…
Hope you all are well and making the most of the moment!
About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Greeley Company in Danvers, Mass. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is the author of HCPro's Hospital Safety Director's Handbook and is contributing editor for Healthcare Safety Leader. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.