- What is a workaround? A workaround is known as a way invented by users to bypass the system to accomplish a task, usually indicating a poor fit of the system or technology to the workflow or user (Seaman & Erlen, 2015). The book mentions an incident where they remove the armband from the patient and attach it to the bed (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018). I witnessed an incident where the barcode was faded and they got a new one but didn’t put it on the patient and left it on their table. The risk of this is not being able to identify the patient because they do not have their armband on. If they go into a different patient room then the people that find them have no way of confirming who they are. The only benefit I see from this incident is being able to identify the armband and scan it in a shorter amount of time.
- I currently work just like any hospital have the MAR, charting system that automatically locks if there is no activity within a certain amount of time. Bed alarms and call lights are the most important when it comes to patient safety because I work at a rehab center and there are many patients that try to get out of bed on their own when they are not able to stand on their own. This is where the bed alarm comes in handy because we are able to attend to the patient before they attempt to get out of bed. In most cases, they get scared of the alarm and they tend to just freeze until somebody comes in the room and turns it off. There are a couple of things that can be changed to improve patient safety. The facility I work attends to have old beds and computers. They tend to have more issues where the call light doesn’t work because it’s attached to the bed, the computer is lagging, shutting off, or restarting on its own. It can affect patient charting if the information is not saved. After a certain number of years, supplies should be changed to prevent patient injury.
