A Hospital is a very busy facility where there is a continuous process of admission and discharge of patients going on. However, if we talk about rooms of a hospital, there are many things going on simultaneously which sometimes creates chaos. And due to this, there could be a risk of following tech hazards.
1. Alarm Fatigue
In hospital rooms, there are physicians, nurses, patients and of course, several devices that are constantly monitoring the patient. With a lot of devices being operated simultaneously and emitting beeps and alarms in a chorus, alarm fatigue occurs, making the physicians and nurses get their attention off the important alarms. To avoid this pitfall, the facility should incorporate a system where only the important alarms ring that catches the attention of everyone easily.
2. Infusion Hazard
This could be the most dangerous and deadliest hazard in a hospital. Patient’s infusion is a very critical process that requires expert handling and extreme care. Even though there are several infusion pumps and machines present in the hospital to avoid the IV errors but sometimes they fail to do so. The main issue arises when the medication is allowed to flow into the body of a patient without any restriction. However, this hazard can be avoided by checking the physical condition and drip chamber right below the medication pool of infusion pumps before using it on the patient.
3. Device Malfunctioning
Sometimes, devices are cleaned by using to unsuitable cleaning agents that can cause:
- Corrosion in nonmetallic parts of the device
- Cleaning residues result in negative effects
- Fail to catch the power
- Inaccurate results
- False alarms
All of these include in malfunctioning of a device which can risk the life of a patient and can even cause an injury to the staff members. So, prevent this hazard by using the appropriate and compatible cleaners. A regular device and machine inspection would also help in reducing this tech hazard in your hospital.
4. Missed Ventilator Alarms
Staff members can miss the ventilator alarms because of alarm fatigue which can risk the life of a patient. It is a very common hazard which can be avoided by inspecting the ventilator’s alarm regularly to make it sure that the alarms are working correctly and are audible to everyone present in the room so that the life of the patient isn’t endangered.
5. IT Errors
IT department of a hospital manages the information and data about every single patient that has entered the hospital. The data includes; their medical condition, medical reports, days of stay, type of treatment provided and day of discharge. These are all very crucial information about any patient which should be entered accurately in the system. But, the risk of hazards gets extremely high when the inaccurate information is entered about a patient. Make sure there is someone who double-checks the entered information about every patient so that none of the patient’s life is put at risk.
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