Transamazon Regional Hospital strengthens patient safety strategies
Among the measures, the unit follows a routine of training and international protocols
Deisilene Santos is allergic to medications based on dipyrone and discovered this in the worst way. “I took it and felt something strange, a very cold sweat, I panicked. It’s very bad to need a medicine and not be able to take it,” reports the housewife. At the time, Deisilene was admitted to the Transamazon Regional Public Hospital (HRPT) in Altamira, southwestern Pará, and informed the teams that attended her. Immediately, the young woman was identified with a red bracelet.
The bracelet is one of the risk signaling items, a requirement of the Unified Health System (SUS), and one of the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO). It is with this type of identification that hospital professionals know when a patient, like Deisilene, has an allergy to a medication. The device, in different colors, is also used to signal fall risk, isolation, contact restriction, and other limitations. At the Transamazon Regional Hospital, this measure is strictly followed and has an uncompromising goal: to ensure patient safety.
Roberta Silva is responsible for the sector that monitors, demands compliance, and makes adjustments when necessary. It is a bureaucratic process, extremely rigorous, but indispensable, defends the coordinator of the Quality Center of HRPT. “The main actions include: adherence to the six patient safety protocols; notification and analysis of incidents; ongoing education and training; monitoring of indicators; and the operation of the Patient Safety Center (NSP).
The largest public health unit in the southwestern region of Pará and a reference for more than half a million inhabitants, the mission of the Transamazon Regional Hospital is to maintain excellence in care quality and, especially, to offer a safe service. Therefore, the hospital maintains a fixed and mandatory training schedule for all sectors. “The NSP actively works on the development of protocols, risk monitoring, team training, and strengthening the patient safety culture,” explains the Quality coordinator.
A nurse for 20 years, Rosivânia Barros, now the assistant director of HRPT, emphasizes that all protocols are linked to senior management, which allows demands to be distributed and applied exactly as established by the Unified Health System. “For this to happen, the care teams undergo constant training, we outline protocols to put into practice on a daily basis, based on the six international patient safety goals,” she highlights.
“From the moment the patient enters, we work focused on safety, with the correct identification, which is goal one. We also facilitate and improve communication among health professionals so that they have all the information passed on,” points out the assistant director. Rosivânia also emphasizes that, in cases of weakened patients and long hospital stays, the responsibility is to ensure that the person can recover from the pathology and is protected against infections and sequelae. “Every day, we are in the areas to ensure that the teams put into practice what the regulations dictate,” she concludes.
Goals are strictly followed
The Transamazon Regional Public Hospital (HRPT) has the highest Accreditation of Excellence seal. This means, in practice, that the unit meets all the requirements of a medium and high complexity treatment center, established by health authorities. For the Quality coordinator, Roberta Silva, “with the active engagement of leadership and integrated communication among teams, actions are strengthened. In this way, we ensure maintenance and improvement.”
For Deisilene, the young woman we mentioned earlier, patient safety was a distant subject. But looking back today, a bracelet has never been so valuable, jokes the housewife, who is still recovering before the expected discharge in the coming days. “I never imagined this existed, but it’s very good, very important. Now identified, everyone already knows about the allergy,” she emphasized.
Text: Rômulo D’Castro.
