Capella FPX 4035 Assessment 1

Name

Capella university

NURS-FPX4035 Enhancing Patient Safety and Quality of Care

Prof. Name

Date

Enhancing Quality and Safety

There are many safety problems in healthcare and diagnostic errors are considered critical since they cause delays in care, additional treatments and more deaths than needed. If a medical diagnosis is obtained incorrectly, missed or comes late, it is because of challenges with thinking, teamwork or how systems are organized. Such errors influence a patient’s happiness, trust in medicine, mindset and general safety (Toker, 2025). The paper concentrates on how diagnostic errors create safety concerns for patients, analyzes what causes them and looks at the solutions offered by evidence and by nurses and other health team members.

Factors Leading to Diagnostic Errors in Healthcare

Many healthcare problems linked to diagnostic errors are overlooked and not reported. Every year nearly 12 million adults in the United States are affected by diagnostic errors and in one out of three cases, the results can be serious or fatal (Gleason et al., 2020). Errors of this kind can be very troubling in fast-moving places like emergency departments and hospital units, where the decisions people have to make are often urgent and difficult.

Common reasons for misdiagnosis include thinking mistakes, not having all the needed medical information, poor patient record-taking and breakdowns between healthcare staff. In some cases, clinicians can become “anchored” to their first assumption and find it hard to adjust when new information arrives. When there is not enough time to think and do everything, critical thinking and clinical reasoning are compromised. Issues at the systems level such as separated Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and different protocols for diagnosing, add extra difficulty to these challenges (Runyon et al., 2022).

When doctors and nurses at Riverside Community Hospital team up to take care of difficult conditions, blurred messages and missed diagnosis checks often contribute to mistakes. If test results are not handled properly or information changes hands incorrectly during a nurse’s shift, it result in a delayed or missed diagnosis. Problems with diagnosis weaken confidence in healthcare services, result in delayed treatment, raise healthcare expenses and increase the risk of malpractice. Being aware of what causes mistakes helps design useful interventions and build a culture in healthcare that helps with accurate and prompt diagnoses (Gleason et al., 2020).

Evidence-Based and Best-Practice Solutions to Reduce Diagnostic Errors

It is important to approach diagnostic errors using clinical best practices, by fixing systems and involving teams from different medical professions. Timely and accurate diagnosis is seen by literature from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), now the National Academy of Medicine and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) as a major part of providing high-quality care. Better accuracy in diagnosis needs to form the base of patient safety and suggests ways to improve joint work, educate teams and apply upgraded health information technology.

The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) initiative is one of the most respected frameworks and features six essential competencies, amongst them patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice and safety (AHRQ, 2024). QSEN hopes that nurses practice expressing themselves thoughtfully and use SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) along with other standardized tools to improve how they communicate about patients in handoffs and consults. Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are considered a sound best-practice intervention.

With CDSS connected to their electronic health records, clinicians instantly get prompts, diagnostic lists and alarms to help them think about various diagnoses and avoid relying on personal assumptions. CDSS helped lower diagnostic disagreements in large clinical environments by 15%. Also, taking time-outs for the team to reconsider what they found can prevent errors from resulting in harm (Harada et al., 2021). Giving everyone a chance to think allows for better shared choices. Part of a nurse’s role is to look after the patient, inform others of important test results and join in on team discussions about diagnosis. Using these evidence-based approaches, healthcare organizations can improve how they diagnose, reduce serious incidents and support better patient outcomes with less need for costly corrections.

Nurse-Driven Strategies to Increase Safety and Reduce Costs

Coordinating care which results in safer patients and lower healthcare costs, mainly depends on nurses. They participate in activities that reduce errors, help maintain a patient’s care and teach and support patients. Taking care of patient transitions is proven to be very impactful. Nurses always use SBAR when handing off important details during admission, discharge or transfers between departments. Because of this, chances of missing or delaying a diagnosis are significantly reduced. Helping people understand their condition is also very important. Nurses guide patients and their families on signs and symptoms to report, taking their medication and what to do after they go home. Learning about their conditions helps patients start taking care of themselves, cutting down on new hospitalizations and mistakes in diagnosis.

Partnership among various professional fields is just as valuable. Nurses link doctors, specialists, pharmacists and the rest of the care team. By attending multidisciplinary rounds and case conferences, they give advice based on what they observe at the patient’s bedside. With this approach, it is less likely important information will be missed. Keeping medical records accurate and up-to-date supports both safe and inexpensive treatment (Flaubert, 2021). By clearly documenting all assessments, actions and responses from patients in the medical record, nurses help maintain continuity and accountability needed for good diagnosis and quality assurance. As a result, safety increases and costs go down because there are less chance of errors in diagnosis, fewer unnecessary tests are performed and malpractice related to misdiagnosis is less likely.

Stakeholders Involved in Safety Enhancement

Caring for patient safety is the job of many individuals, who all play important roles in discovering threats, taking steps to prevent harm and improving how care is given. Nurses on the inside are essential, regularly keeping an eye on patients, looking out for risks to their safety and applying solutions to stop delays in diagnosis. Part of a physician’s role is to decide actions, seek advice from others when appropriate and highly value the ideas of the wider healthcare team. Resources are given by administrators to help staff in training, technology and QI projects to improve safety. When serious or nearly serious mistakes happen, risk managers and patient safety officers examine them and propose safety measures to address diagnostic errors.

Through tools that rely on data, they shape safety procedures and check their effectiveness. On the outside, patients and their families are now seen as very important to healthcare. Professionals benefit from their loved ones’ knowledge of how they felt, their medical background and the care they received, helping providers notice any latest changes in a patient’s condition (Runyon et al., 2022). When patients are educated, they become more able to inquire, clear up misunderstandings and support their own needs. Organizations such as The AHRQ play a role by developing protocols and supporting practices based on scientific research for healthcare improvement (AHRQ, 2024).

Conclusion

Diagnostic errors remain a serious patient safety concern that undermines trust, delays care, and increases healthcare costs. Understanding their root causes, ranging from cognitive biases to systemic failures, enables healthcare professionals to implement effective, evidence-based interventions. Nurses, as frontline caregivers, play a vital role in coordinating care, improving communication, and ensuring timely and accurate diagnoses through patient education, collaboration, and thorough documentation. Engaging all stakeholders, including interdisciplinary teams, administrators, patients, and regulatory agencies, creates a culture of safety and shared accountability.

References

AHRQ. (2024). The patient’s role in diagnostic safety and excellence: From passive reception toward co-design PATIENT SAFETY e. https://www.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/diagnostic/resources/issue-briefs/dx-safety-patient-role.pdf

Flaubert, J. (2021). The role of nurses in improving health care access and quality. In www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK573910/

Gleason, K. T., Jones, R., Rhodes, C., Greenberg, P., Harkless, G., Goeschel, C., Cahill, M., & Graber, M. (2020). Evidence that nurses need to participate in diagnosis: Lessons from malpractice claims. Journal of Patient Safety, 17(8), e959–e963. https://doi.org/10.1097/pts.0000000000000621