Elevating Safety in the Exam Room

By Julie Heinrichs, Senior Marketing Manager

Many healthcare professionals would agree that safety is important for quality of both patient care and clinical outcomes. That’s why it’s no surprise that safety always scores high when healthcare executives and practitioners are surveyed on what’s important in their healthcare system. 

Unfortunately, many healthcare systems struggle to balance the need to create and maintain a safe, inviting experience for patients and caregivers with other priorities. And while safety is universally seen as important within healthcare, it can often be overlooked when other equally important demands take priority.

Remembering Why Safety is Important

For patients, routine visits to the doctor can be uncomfortable and filled with anxiety. This can be even more of an issue for persons with mobility issues or concerns about personal safety.

For caregivers, experiencing physical, emotional and mental exhaustion may be seen as just being part of the job. The risk for exhaustion can be even worse with the constant concern for safety—assisting patients with mobility issues, straining to reach supplies or even possible cross-contamination and infection from contagions.

Healthcare professionals and patients should expect a better experience where safety is not a constant concern. Patients should be able to focus on their health and the reason for the visit. Providers should be able to spend the day focused on the health and well-being of their patients without sacrificing their own.

This is why it is important that every effort is made to ensure safety is always a priority.

Five Steps to Keeping Safety a Priority

While balancing safety with other priorities can be challenging, there are a number of basic steps practitioners and healthcare organizations can take to keep safety at the forefront as they focus on quality care and better outcomes: 

1. Balance experience with efficiency

    

2. Identify the right room configurations

    

3. Choose the right equipment

    

4. Invest in technology

    

5. Offer appropriate training

By following these steps, your clinical spaces will be designed to meet the demand for high quality care while improving the patient-caregiver experience. To learn more about this five-step approach, check out our latest white paper.