According to PVK’s remuneration manager Elina Muukkonen, healthcare professionals do not need to know when a patient injury may be eligible for compensation. If the patient suspects damage, he can seek help from the healthcare patient advocate, and the reporting process removes the issue from the daily life of the patient and the healthcare unit. PVK collects the damage report after receiving additional information from the participants in the event and assesses whether the statutory compensation criteria are met.
When the compensation decision is made, it is notified to the healthcare unit or healthcare professional who treated the patient in the event of the suspected injury. The Finnish patient insurance system does not look for the culprits or punish the persons involved in the case. Instead, a patient injury offers an opportunity for learning and improving healthcare practices.
The survey revealed that only 40% of responding doctors know how patient injury reports are handled at their workplace. A third of the respondents knew that their workplace has a procedure for handling damage reports, but they were not familiar with it. More than a quarter of the respondents did not know how damage reports are handled in their organization. The survey was answered by 375 doctors working at Lรครคkรคri days.
Patient safety is vital in healthcare, and a good patient safety culture is open, fair, non-accusatory, learning, confidential and evidence-based. Patients who file an injury report often hope that the incident will be discussed in health care units and that service providers will learn about it. After a patient injury, it is important to identify the root causes of the event, often at the system level, so that similar injuries do not recur in the future. An open conversation with the patient and an apology are also good practices.
In summary, healthcare units should be more transparent in their patient injury reporting processes and healthcare providers should be better informed about how patient injury reports are handled in their workplace. Open discussions and apologies after accidents can help improve patient safety culture and prevent similar incidents in the future.
HT
Source: The Nordic Page