Due to the aging population, vulnerable elderly people with a complex disease will become the most common patient in hospitals.
“You can say that partly thanks to the safety management system, the ‘low hanging fruit’ has been picked, which has resulted in a significant reduction in preventable deaths,” says Wagner. “But with this demographic development, we need to take extra steps to advance patient safety as best we can.”
One of the recommendations made by NIVEL is to strengthen the ‘signalling function’ of nurses. After all, they are the eyes and ears of the doctors. With additional training, they should be able to recognize symptoms of infection, sepsis, bleeding complications and pneumonia sooner after choking.
Additional training
Esther Cornegé is a clinical geriatrician at the Jeroen Bosch Hospital in Den Bosch, specialized in the treatment of the elderly and chair of the NVKG professional association. She agrees that additional training to better understand the illnesses of the elderly is necessary.
“The elderly often have different symptoms than we are used to. They often have a lower body temperature and will not always have a fever in case of an infection, such as pneumonia, as we are used to, but a lower temperature or confusion. If you do not know that, you can long miss the signals that an infection is underway.”
According to Cornegé, not only nurses but also doctors should receive additional training. “Recently, the geriatrics component has been included as standard in the training for basic physicians. But this is not yet the case in the follow-up training to, for example, a surgeon or pulmonologist. They have now included this in their training plan. make elderly people.”
Teamoverleg
Another important NIVEL recommendation is that hospitals allow more time and space for team consultations of healthcare providers. Because the elderly have multiple conditions, multiple medical specialists will be involved. Because the treatment of condition A can actually worsen condition B and vice versa, tight coordination between specialists could prevent unnecessary complications.
In addition, Cornegé points out that improving patient safety also largely depends on staffing levels. There has been a severe shortage of nurses for years. “It would be great if nurses could signal even better in the future. However, if they have to monitor too many patients at the same time, there is still a chance that signals will be missed.”
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