Patient safety
In essence, patient safety means preventing harm from treatment and minimising the risk of unnecessary harm in healthcare. Get to know some aspects of patient safety and how we implement them at Schulthess Klinik below.
Patient identification
Our patients wear a wristband with their name throughout their entire stay in the clinic. This way we can ensure correct patient identification and avoid any confusion. Patients are identified by their wristband right before every diagnostic, therapeutic and care measure. The wristband is used throughout the entire stay and also as part of the safety checklist.
Patient safety checklist
The checklist accompanies patients from the ward to the operating room and back. It ensures that all the safety-related questions have been asked and the relevant actions have been taken. This includes, for example, patient identification, adherence to fasting requirements, and verification of the type and site of intervention. So patients are repeatedly asked some of the same questions not because the staff are forgetful but solely for the purpose of patient safety.
Communication and reporting system
Schulthess Klinik has a Critical Incident Reporting System (CIRS), where critical incidents are reported. The purpose of such a system is to learn from mistakes, avoid future mistakes, and promote a no-blame culture internally.
In the lunchtime report, the nursing staff bring up safety-related incidents. This includes any falls, bed sores/haemorrhagic blisters, medication failures, or patients experiencing delirium. If necessary, measures are taken, re-evaluated and discussed in an interdisciplinary setting.
Safety-related surveys and measurements
Schulthess Klinik participates in various internal and external safety-related surveys and ratings. This includes patient satisfaction, prevalence ratings (fall prevention, bed sores), infection rates and rehospitalisations. For additional information, including publicly available figures, please see our Quality Report.
Medication management
Medication errors pose a high safety risk for patients in the clinical practice. Therefore, Schulthess Klinik places special importance on safe medication management.
Medication is controlled and administered according to Elliott and Liu’s Nine Rights rule, which must be followed at all times (right patient, right medication, right route, right time, right dosage, right documentation, right reason, right form, right reaction).
Hospital hygiene and infection prevention
The aim of hospital hygiene is to prevent nosocomial infections (hospital-acquired infections) among both inpatients and outpatients. At Schulthess Klinik, patient safety and infection prevention are of high priority. Conducting regular hygiene inspections, training and infection monitoring and providing advice are some of the hospital hygiene team’s most important tasks. Contact: spitalhygiene@kws.ch
Collaboration within the field of infectiology and hospital hygiene is regulated in the collaboration contract with Spital Zollikerberg and by the infectiological consultation service.
ISO certification
Schulthess Klinik is ISO 9001:2015 certified since November 2017. This quality management system ensures that system quality, process quality and performance quality are checked and improved regularly and systematically, and patient safety is an important part of this.
Document management
Document control ensures that all Schulthess Klinik employees work only with the latest approved version of a document and thus according to predefined standards. This increases the quality of treatment and patient safety. These documents, a total of 3,300, are reviewed once a year.