Case Study

Dennis, 73 years old, went to the doctor, who prescribed bloodwork and other laboratory tests. Dennis went to the restroom to provide a urine sample. The laboratory technician came and drew blood from a different patient without going through the usual protocol. Dennis came back from the restroom and waited for an hour before complaining. The nursing team then contacted the laboratory and were informed the technician had drawn the blood from the wrong patient. This means that the blood results from a different patient would have been recorded for Dennis. An incident report was necessary.

Poor communication and a lack of teamwork result in many errors in the service delivery process. Success of the risk management program depends largely on team efforts. Individuals, units, and departments work in synergy with different responsibilities and roles to achieve the risk management objectives. Teamwork is also indispensable to patient safety and the delivery of quality services.

Answer the following questions to complete this report:

1. What are the attributes of a successful healthcare team?
2. What function does a team approach support?
3. Risk managers coordinate risk management with other teams at every level of the health organization. What do their responsibilities include?
4. What does successful risk assessment require?
5. Historically, after the 1999 Institute of Medicine (IoM) report on the alarming numbers of preventable medical errors in healthcare organizations, how did risk managers’ orientation change?
6. In risk management, what does treating the risk involve?
7. What do ethical standards expect of health workers?
8. The risk manager works with other team leaders on training. What does this involve?
9. What are some factors included on the never events list of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)?
10. What is part of high-reliability organizations?
11. What are important factors to include in a risk treatment (risk reduction or risk mitigation) plan?

Submitting your assignment in APA format means, at a minimum, you will need the following:

• Title page: Remember the running head. The title should be in all capitals.
• Length: 3 pages minimum
• Abstract: This is a summary of your paper, not an introduction. Begin writing in third person.
• Body: This begins on the page following the title page and abstract page and must be double-spaced (be careful not to triple- or quadruple-space between paragraphs). The typeface should be 12-pt. Times Roman or 12-pt. Courier in regular black type. Do not use color, bold type, or italics, except as required for APA-level headings and references. The deliverable length of the body of your paper for this assignment is 5 pages. In-body academic citations to support your decisions and analysis are required. A variety of academic sources is encouraged.
• Reference page: References that align with your in-body academic sources are listed on the final page of your paper. The references must be in APA format using appropriate spacing, hanging indent, italics, and uppercase and lowercase usage as appropriate for the type of resource used. Remember, the Reference page is not a bibliography but a further listing of the abbreviated in-body citations used in the paper. Every referenced item must have a corresponding in-body citation.