Textbook of Urgent Care Management: Chapter 39, Ensuring Patient Safety

CHAPTER 39

Ensuring Patient Safety

John Shufeldt

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CHAPTER 39

Ensuring Patient Safety

John Shufeldt

IF ALL ELSE FAILS , patient safety needs to be the one constant—the one common denominator—by which the urgent care industry is recognized. Assuming this focus on patient safety is so important, the follow-up question we must therefore ask is whether we, as an industry, are spending enough time, money, and resources to ensure that we meet this objective.

First, we must recognize that urgent care medicine is by nature a high-risk undertaking. Generally, patients who present for services are generally not well suited to select the treatment modality or location most appropriate for their particular complaint, and thus many conditions and injuries exceed the level of service and care available at a particular facility. This is not to say that the provider cannot diagnose the condition and effectively treat the patient. Rather, it simply points to the need for the available resources, both human and equipment, that are necessary for the patient’s immediate and ongoing care.

Urgent care medicine is more challenging than emergency medicine because it is akin to finding the proverbial needle in the haystack, and because emergency department (ED) providers generally have access to the resources to diagnose and treat the patient, as well as access to consultants and ancillary staff members to whom they can turn for assistance.

Moreover, in the ED, emergency physicians and their teams are trained to think "worst