When providing nursing home dental care, it is very important to ensure the safety of the patients. Patient safety efforts prevent unintentional harm to elderly patients due to healthcare. When providing medical treatment and surgical treatment, medical professionals have found it challenging to keep accidents from occurring. However, some healthcare professionals are unable to prevent these accidents from happening and this is the reason why patient safety has been introduced as a healthcare discipline. For a very long time, healthcare providers have been trying hard to ensure the safety of the patients. For them, it is an ethical and legal duty to ensure that patients are safe.
Today, a lot of healthcare providers take measurements of damage inflicted to patients unintentionally, record the measurements and seek ways in which the damage can be avoided in future. When it comes to ensuring patients’ safety, dentistry has been doing badly. One of the most effective ways of preventing damage to patients is reporting adverse events so that they can be investigated on time.
Healthcare systems should prioritize on the safety of the patients
The safety of the patient in any medicine branch has to begin with the healthcare system. Medical practitioners should therefore ensure the safety of the patients a goal as they provide treatment to patients. They should be keen on medical procedures to prevent injuries. Dental team members should make it their duty to report accidents and errors and discuss them amongst themselves when they have staff meetings.
Dentists need to focus on clinical records
When it comes to providing nursing home dental care service, it is important to overemphasize clinical records. A dentist should check the medical history of a patient before treatment. Clinical records showing pathologies, allergies and medication must be regularly updated. These measures aim at helping dentists to treat their patients without making unnecessary errors. Dentists can use patient identification solutions to ensure that they are using the correct records hence enhancing the safety of the patient.
Avoid reusing marketing materials and tools meant for treatment
One of the main causes of accidents and errors in dentistry is the reuse of packaging containers to package other materials. This can bring a lot of confusion as dental care providers can end up giving patients the wrong treatment. Dentists should ensure that all the materials and tools that are supposed to be disposed of are disposed of immediately. If disposable materials are reused, they may spread infections among the patients. It is therefore important to ensure that containers are not reused because they lack enough preservatives and could infect the areas where they are kept.
Be very careful when prescribing medication
If you are providing nursing home dental care, it is important to be very careful when prescribing medication. Medical experts and dentists can take the necessary measures to prevent this problem. It is important to let patients know about the prescription by giving them all the details such as the number of injections; when to take, the duration and tell the patient the importance of adhering to the dentist’s advice.