Quality And Safety In Radiology

This book provides a roadmap for optimizing quality and safety within radiology practices, whether academic or private and irrespective of their national setting. All aspects of the radiology workflow are addressed, from imaging appropriateness, examination scheduling, and patient preparation through to imaging protocol optimization (including radiation dose management), modality operations, reporting (including structured reporting), and report communication. The book highlights innovative IT tools, including clinical decision support, that drive compliance with national best practice standards and guidelines. The use of big data tools to manage and enhance clinical delivery is addressed. Finally, metrics designed to measure the value that radiology brings to patient care and patient outcomes are introduced. Readers wishing to deepen their understanding of contemporary best practices regarding quality and safety will find this book to be a rich source of practical information.

Radiology has been transformed by new imaging advances and a greater demand for imaging, along with a much lower tolerance for error as part of the Quality & Safety revolution in healthcare. With a greater emphasis on patient safety and quality in imaging practice, imaging specialists are increasingly charged with ensuring patient safety and demonstrating that everything done for patients in their care meets the highest quality and safety standards. This book offers practical guidance on understanding, creating, and implementing quality management programs in Radiology. Chapters are comprehensive, detailed, and organized into three sections: Core Concepts, Management Concepts, and Educational & Special Concepts. Discussions are applicable to all practice settings: community hospitals, private practice, academic radiology, and government/military practice, as well as to those preparing for the quality and safety questions on the American Board of Radiology's "Maintenance of Certification" or initial Board Certification Examinations. Bringing together the various elements that comprise the quality and safety agenda for Radiology, this book serves as a thorough roadmap and resource for radiologists, technicians, and radiology managers and administrators.

This book is the product of a unique collaboration by experts from leading international, regional and national agencies and professional organizations discussing on the current ‘hot’ issue on the judicious use and safety of radiation in radiology. There have been several cases involving radiation overexposure that have received international attention. Strategies and solutions to guide readers how to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks when using radiation in medicine are covered.

Zero in on a key aspect of radiology with Quality and Safety in Medical Imaging: The Essentials! Ideal as an efficient learning tool for residents as well as a quick refresher for experienced radiologists, this practical reference covers every essential feature of this important field, putting indispensable information at your fingertips in a compact, high-yield format. You’ll be brought up to date on radiation dose and safety, patient satisfaction, monitoring and reporting of complications, quality and safety in breast imaging, evidence-based radiology, quality dashboards, quality and safety in nuclear medicine, and much more.

Implementing safety practices in healthcare saves lives and improves the quality of care: it is therefore vital to apply good clinical practices, such as the WHO surgical checklist, to adopt the most appropriate measures for the prevention of assistance-related risks, and to identify the potential ones using tools such as reporting & learning systems. The culture of safety in the care environment and of human factors influencing it should be developed from the beginning of medical studies and in the first years of professional practice, in order to have the maximum impact on clinicians' and nurses' behavior. Medical errors tend to vary with the level of proficiency and experience, and this must be taken into account in adverse events prevention. Human factors assume a decisive importance in resilient organizations, and an understanding of risk control and containment is fundamental for all medical and surgical specialties. This open access book offers recommendations and examples of how to improve patient safety by changing practices, introducing organizational and technological innovations, and creating effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable care systems, in order to spread the quality and patient safety culture among the new generation of healthcare professionals, and is intended for residents and young professionals in different clinical specialties.

Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. That's more than die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDSâ€"three causes that receive far more public attention. Indeed, more people die annually from medication errors than from workplace injuries. Add the financial cost to the human tragedy, and medical error easily rises to the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems. To Err Is Human breaks the silence that has surrounded medical errors and their consequenceâ€"but not by pointing fingers at caring health care professionals who make honest mistakes. After all, to err is human. Instead, this book sets forth a national agendaâ€"with state and local implicationsâ€"for reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through the design of a safer health system. This volume reveals the often startling statistics of medical error and the disparity between the incidence of error and public perception of it, given many patients' expectations that the medical profession always performs perfectly. A careful examination is made of how the surrounding forces of legislation, regulation, and market activity influence the quality of care provided by health care organizations and then looks at their handling of medical mistakes. Using a detailed case study, the book reviews the current understanding of why these mistakes happen. A key theme is that legitimate liability concerns discourage reporting of errorsâ€"which begs the question, "How can we learn from our mistakes?" Balancing regulatory versus market-based initiatives and public versus private efforts, the Institute of Medicine presents wide-ranging recommendations for improving patient safety, in the areas of leadership, improved data collection and analysis, and development of effective systems at the level of direct patient care. To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health careâ€"it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer. Comprehensive and straightforward, this book offers a clear prescription for raising the level of patient safety in American health care. It also explains how patients themselves can influence the quality of care that they receive once they check into the hospital. This book will be vitally important to federal, state, and local health policy makers and regulators, health professional licensing officials, hospital administrators, medical educators and students, health caregivers, health journalists, patient advocatesâ€"as well as patients themselves. First in a series of publications from the Quality of Health Care in America, a project initiated by the Institute of Medicine

Quality and Safety in Anesthesia and Perioperative Care offers practical suggestions for improving quality of care and patient safety in the perioperative setting. Chapters are organized into sections on clinical foundations and practical applications, and emphasize strategies that support reform at all levels, from operating room practices to institutional procedures. Written by leading experts in their fields, chapters are based on accepted safety, human performance, and quality management science and they illustrate the benefits of collaboration between medical professionals and human factors experts. The book highlights concepts such as situation awareness, staff resource management, threat and error management, checklists, explicit practices for monitoring, and safety culture. Quality and Safety in Anesthesia and Perioperative Care is a must-have resource for those preparing for the quality and safety questions on the American Board of Anesthesiology certification examinations, as well as clinicians and trainees in all practice settings.