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Solutions to Improve Patient Engagement and Safety in Primary Care

Author: Capella Healthcare

what's covered

In this lesson, you will learn about solutions to improve patient engagement and safety in primary care. Specifically, this lesson will cover:

Solutions

1. Solutions

The World Health Organization proposed these solutions for improving patient engagement and safety in primary care. Research suggests that interventions to engage patients in their healthcare journey fall into three broad categories: educating patients and health care providers about safer healthcare; obtaining retrospective or real-time feedback; and engaging in system or service improvements.

Solutions	Description
Educating healthcare providers about patient engagement	Include patient engagement and safety in educational curricula in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Develop a learning culture rather than a blaming culture. Educate healthcare providers about shared decision making and improving communication.
Supporting patients' active involvement	Actively support patient feedback systems. Encourage patients to report safety concerns and incidents. Provide timely feedback to patients about complaints and concerns they raise. Provide patients with accurate and up-to-date information about treatments in a user-friendly language and format.
Increasing patient involvement	Expand ways to communicate with patients using text, email, and online video calls. Implement systems to facilitate patient access to medical records. Involve patient advocates where appropriate to support patient engagement in direct care and organizational and policy decisions.
Recognizing the importance of communities	Adapt engagement strategies to local cultures and social settings. Identify social groups, families, and communities as a resource to support change.
Providing and enabling a supportive environment	Encourage collaboration and interaction between healthcare professionals and patients and families. Link patient feedback systems (complaints, patient satisfaction, online feedback) to organizational systems for learning and improvement. Provide information and support for self-care such as layperson-led classes, care coordinators, support groups. Designate and support patient safety champions or advocates to facilitate patient engagement. Create a universal process for patient engagement at the systems level.

Authored by Cindy Ebner, MSN, RN, CPHRM, FASHRM

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If you are struggling with a concept or terminology in the course, you may contact RiskManagementSupport@capella.edu for assistance.

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