National patient safety goals – Joint Commission
Instructions
Access the Joint Commission website for the most current National Patient Safety Goals. Select one or more NPSGs and address the following: Explain rationale for applying the National Patient Safety Goals in nursing practice and then discuss some of the benefits and challenges of implementing the NPSG in a health care organization. How does appropriate application of the elements of performance in the NPSG reduce negative pt outcomes?
SAMPLE STUDENT ANSWER
National Patient Safety Goals
The Joint Commission has in place National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) that seek to enable accredited organizations to address areas of concern on the safety of patients (The Joint Commission, 2021). Goal one is to Identify patients correctly and goal two is to improve effective communication (The Joint Commission, 2021). The NPSGs rely on data from all the accredited health care facilities for benchmarking purposes with other facilities and identify areas for improvement.
They are aimed at the resolution of safety and quality issues in the provision of medical services by providing updated guidance to health care administrators (The Joint Commission, 2021). They have developed goals to guide health care organizations in the delivery of medical services. Some of the benefits of the NPSGs are that they enable health care providers and organizations the reduction of medical errors (The Joint Commission, 2021). These errors are known to cause the ballooning of medical costs.
An example of an error in prescription of wrong drugs to patients that result in adverse reactions that then cost more to manage and treat (Mascioli & Carrico, 2016). They also encourage the uptake of new technologies aimed at eliminating errors at all stages of providing medical care to patients. An example of such technology is the adaption of mobile in eliminating medical errors through improved record-keeping, communication, and enhanced nursing efficiency.
They do improve patient outcomes in an area like the reduction of avoidable readmissions of patients (Mascioli & Carrico, 2016, The Joint Commission, 2021). With the emphasis on meeting safety standards, the NPSGs have put a demand on the quality of nursing professionals through improved medical training (Mascioli & Carrico, 2016).
Medical providers are still struggling with compliance with NPSGs for various reasons. The first is a challenge is in the adaption of necessary information technologies across a complex medical environment. Technology is and not all health care organizations can afford similar technologies (The Joint Commission, 2021Graber et al., 2016). To worsen the situation, the last few years have seen rapid technological changes that heath organizations are struggling to keep up with.
For example, data storage systems are always being improved on and facilities can only acquire what they can afford making the use of technology to lack uniformity across the board (Graber et al., 2016). Challenges also occur in technology uptake in having a one size fits all regulatory framework for ensuring patient safety.

The second challenge is in having uniform medical reconciliation across all health care organizations (Minto-Pennant, 2016). This has been a long-standing issue in cases where patients are transitioned across different levels or medical organizations (Minto-Pennant, 2016). As many patients are taking an average of nine drugs each day, the lack of harmonious transition results in many cases of medical errors. The lack of proper transition brings about challenges in performing accurate medical reviews (Minto-Pennant, 2016).
The appropriate application of the elements of performance has facilitated the appreciation of patient safety across the medical field by all the stakeholders. It eliminates basic flaws and errors that may turn fatal or increase the financial burden. Health care organizations can share data on best practices which ensures that safety standards are enhanced (The Joint Commission, 2021). By focussing on specific deliverables, it becomes easier for stakeholders to discover challenges faced in a human resource like nursing shortages which if unchecked will implement patient safety challenges. They also ensure that the basic standards are met by health care organizations and health care providers which is a key step in standardization (The Joint Commission, 2021).
References
Graber, M. L., Bailey, R., & Johnston, D. (2016). Goals and Priorities for Health Care Organizations to Improve Safety Using Health IT. US Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
Mascioli, S., & Carrico, C. B. (2016). Spotlight on the 2016 national patient safety goals for hospitals. Nursing2020 Critical Care, 11(6), 19-22
Minto-Pennant, S. (2016). Roadmap to Quality: Effective Medication Reconciliation Minimizes Errors in a Long-Term Care Setting. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 17(3), B2
The Joint Commission. (2021). National Patient Safety Goals. https://www.jointcommission.org/standards/national-patient-safety-goals/