Today, remote work is becoming a popular phenomenon across a variety of industries. Many are surprised to find out that even healthcare professionals are now starting to transition into work-from-home jobs that allow them to forego the commute to a healthcare facility or office. 

Unfortunately, this rise in digital and remote patient care is giving some people cause for concern. Specifically, how this growing innovation is affecting patient safety. 

Gaining a deeper understanding of why more healthcare professionals are opting to work remotely and how this affects the patients they serve is key to cultivating an accurate perspective on healthcare in the modern age. 

Here are the reasons why work-from-home nursing jobs are on the rise and how this affects patient safety and identity. 

Nurses want more Flexibility and Balance

While nursing roles can be extremely fulfilling and secure, they can also be strenuous. Often, this extra stress stems from nurses being overworked to the point of experiencing burnout and exhaustion. 

As a result of being consistently overworked and experiencing high levels of stress, many nurses are now hungry for less taxing ways to engage in the profession of nursing. In other words, nurses across the country are beginning to prioritize work-life balance like never before. This being the case, many nurses are now competing for remote roles that allow them to engage in their profession from the comfort of their own homes. 

In addition to being in a less stressful environment, work-from-home nursing roles have the potential to allow nurses to have more flexibility. This can come in the form of different types of schedules or even different types of roles. 

Ultimately, many nurses are now viewing remote positions as more conducive to their needs than in-person roles. As such, more and more of these professionals are now taking the leap and exploring work-from-home options. 

The Rise of Telehealth

In the past, remote or work-from-home nursing roles were virtually unheard of. The biggest reason for this is that the technology and infrastructure necessary to pull this type of arrangement off were difficult, if not impossible, to find. 

Today, however, this is far from the case. Telehealth, the practice of providing patient care through electronic means, has exploded in the last several years. As a result of this new and innovative practice becoming commonplace, remote nursing has become more conducive to patient care. 

As remote care continues to rise in popularity, more and more work-from-home nursing jobs are becoming available to healthcare professionals. In fact, even professionals from other industries are now considering nursing as a second career given the increase in remote options. 

What this seems to indicate is that there may have always been a desire among nurses to work remotely but there simply weren’t any options for this type of work. As these options become more available, it seems that more and more nurses will take the leap and explore work-from-home options. 

The Problem of Rural Healthcare

Those living in rural areas often have far less access to healthcare resources than their city-dwelling counterparts. This being the case, remote healthcare options have become increasingly popular for rural residents. 

Given the large number of rural residents in need of healthcare, there is a marked need for nurses with the skills to provide care through digital means. As a result, more remote roles are arising for nurses in order to address the problem of rural health. 

Since rural health is one of healthcare’s major problems currently, it’s likely that the number of these rural health-oriented remote nursing roles will continue to rise in popularity. 

The Cost of Living is Increasing Everywhere

Sadly, almost every American city is currently feeling the effects of inflation and rising costs. Two areas that are being particularly impacted are that of cars and gas. As a result, many professionals are looking for ways to lower their costs by saving on gas or getting rid of their cars completely. 

For nurses, commutes can sometimes be significant. This is especially true for nurses who work at facilities in urban centers where rent is higher. To combat these costs, many nurses are now looking for remote roles. 

Work-from-home nursing roles allow nurses to continue to command a decent salary without having to pay exorbitant fees for gas and other costs associated with commuting. For this reason, remote options are becoming increasingly popular among nurses across the country. 

How Digital Care is Affecting Patient Safety

As has been noted, there is a growing concern that digital care is potentially compromising the safety of patients, their private information, and their identities. However, healthcare organizations across the country are taking robust measures to protect their patients and deliver them high-quality remote care. 

Essentially, patients are put at risk of having their information leaked if cybercriminals are able to hack the defenses of healthcare organizations and gain access to their networks and databases. However, given the fact that most healthcare organizations have already made their processes digital, such as in the case of electronic health records, remote care itself is not the only process creating risk for patients. 

While remote care may create more weak points that hackers may try to exploit, there is already a risk of patient information being hacked whether nurses work remotely or not. For this reason, it seems safe to say that while work-from-home nursing may have some effect on the safety of patient information, it isn’t as significant of an impact as many believe. 

Remote Nursing is the Future of Healthcare

Though some are skeptical about the safety of work-from-home nursing, remote healthcare will likely play a key role in the future of healthcare. Hopefully, this innovation in the space will help make healthcare processes more efficient, increase work satisfaction among nurses, and make healthcare more convenient for patients across the country. 

Statistics indicate that about one in every 10 patients experience harm in health care, and over three billion deaths occur yearly because of unsafe care. Over 50% of harm, which translates to one in every 20 patients, is preventable. Patient safety covers information safety as well. It safeguards hospitals from legal troubles and patients from financial loss associated with unsafe data. With proper patient safety practices, healthcare facilities can prevent unnecessary expenses and boost their reputation. Discussed below are five ways to improve patient safety in hospitals.

Ensure patients understand their treatments

Patient safety isn’t the healthcare provider’s responsibility alone. Patients have a responsibility as well. Educating your patients about their treatments can help prevent post-treatment mistakes. Ensure patients have an in-depth understanding of the treatment they’re receiving and the risks they might face along the way. For instance, if you run a clinic such as this Weight Loss Clinic Chicago, ensure your patients know the treatments you offer, their risks, and the post-treatment care they need to achieve the desired results.

Leverage monitoring technology

Healthcare providers look after multiple patients during their work shifts. Each of these patients has unique medical needs and varying medications. With the help of monitoring technology, physicians and nurses can confirm that they’re constantly adhering to the correct procedures for the right patients and ensure they’re keeping up with each patient’s unique needs.

To improve patient safety, hospitals can institute technological measures like barcode systems to confirm patient medication or bed alarms to alert healthcare staff when a patient falls. Such monitoring systems make it easier to catch and avert human error-related harm in healthcare settings.

Ascertain positive patient identification

The importance of positive patient identification for patient safety can’t be stressed enough. It’s essential in ensuring value-based care, patient safety, and care coordination. Patient misidentification is very risky. It may lead to patients being incorrectly diagnosed, receiving the wrong treatment (such as surgical procedures on the wrong patients), getting the wrong medication, and pathology collection mislabeling. There are several instances during patient care where identification is crucial and could be jeopardized, including:

• Medication management
• Patient movement
• Transfusion and infusion management
• Patient handover and transfer

Accurate patient identification results in improved healthcare outcomes and avoids medical errors, which enhances patient safety. Patient misidentification can also cause patient data corruption, leading to incorrect treatment plans, readmissions, dangerous healthcare outcomes, and even death. Proper patient identification promotes patient data integrity, enhancing safety.

Improve patient handover processes

Ineffective handover processes are a primary, preventable reason for patient harm. Safe patient handover is a skill that involves transmitting patient information and transferring patient care responsibilities from one medical profession to another. Communication between healthcare providers during handover is a major challenge. Effective communication among outgoing and incoming shift nurses can help increase patient safety and satisfaction while ensuring quality care services.

Foster a patient safety-centered culture

Fostering a culture that prioritizes patient safety can effectively boost patient safety. A hospital’s patient safety culture is the result of group and individual values, perceptions, competencies, attitudes, and behavioral patterns that govern the commitment to a healthcare facility’s safety and health management. All staff members should be a part of that culture and prioritize quality services and patient safety over everything else.

Endnote

Patient safety is vital to ensuring positive healthcare outcomes. Consider implementing these tips to improve patient safety in hospitals.

In healthcare, data plays a crucial role in painting a picture of the overall health of the nation. This is how reports about different health ailments and their frequency can be created and disseminated to the world. 

As one can imagine, this data is immensely important and is likely to be attacked. Without an understanding of how different health ailments affect the population, the healthcare sector would have a difficult, if not impossible, time crafting widescale cures, treatments, and healthcare plans. 

Unfortunately, if patient data is frequently compromised, crafting these insights and using them to benefit the public becomes much trickier. This being the case, it’s clear that keeping patient data accurate and regularly updated is key to keeping the public as healthy as possible – something that patient identification platforms like RightPatient can easily help with. 

Here is how patient data integrity can improve public health. 

More Accurate Insights

When patient data is up-to-date and correct, the insights gleaned from it are more likely to reflect the rest of the public. Conversely, if old or incorrect patient data is being used to glean insights, it will likely paint a false picture. 

Unfortunately, many healthcare institutions across the country don’t always cross their t’s and dot their i’s when it comes to recording patient data. In some cases — especially in understaffed facilities — patient data is recorded by workers who may be unqualified to do so. While this may seem inconsequential at first glance, when this type of data is used to inform public opinions about health ailments, it can be extremely damaging. 

In addition to some facilities allowing unqualified individuals to record patient data, many healthcare providers aren’t very detail-oriented when it comes to updating records. Just like inaccurate data, data that isn’t properly updated can also create bad insights that lead to faulty public health data. 

Thankfully, a renewed focus on patient data collection and management can help to solve this problem and improve the health of the public at large. This being the case, it’s vital that the healthcare sector prioritizes proper patient data-related practices and helps experts make informed public health decisions with the help of accurate information. 

Effectively Preventing the Spread of Disease

While some pandemics spread too fast and can’t be prevented, others can potentially be contained if caught early enough. Sadly, if patient data integrity is lacking in certain regions, it can make it difficult for experts and officials to effectively stop the spread of threatening diseases. 

This highlights the need for robust patient data integrity in healthcare facilities across the nation. Without this, diseases can spread rampantly throughout communities, damage public health, and decrease levels of patient safety. As such, it’s abundantly apparent that patient data integrity needs to be taken seriously at all healthcare organizations. 

Greater Ability to Efficiently Respond to Health Crises 

As the world experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, health crises can be incredibly devastating — especially when we can’t efficiently and effectively respond to them. Though it’s not a silver bullet solution for curing all pandemics, having accurate patient data collection systems in place can help make public health recoveries far smoother. 

In times of health crises and pandemics, public health experts and epidemiologists must have access to accurate data in order to form response plans. If the patient data that they are using is inaccurate, they may pour significant resources into plans that aren’t as effective as they could have been with the right data. 

Given the importance of correctly recorded and updated patient data in these scenarios, it’s key that healthcare providers have systems in place to accurately collect and update data — even when under significant duress and lacking sufficient staff. 

Having these safeguards in place can ensure that experts in charge of crafting plans to respond to these crises can do so effectively. Consequently, it’s clear that patient data integrity has the power to greatly improve public health and likely even save lives. 

How Healthcare Organizations Can Ensure They’re Accurately Recording Patient Data 

While many in healthcare and public health are thoroughly convinced that the integrity of patient data is important, it’s not always an easy task to accomplish. Fortunately, there are steps that can be taken to ensure that patient data is always correct and public health is at its best. 

Some steps that healthcare organizations can take include:

Oversight: Leaders in healthcare organizations must ensure that all healthcare workers authorized to record patient data are doing so properly. When there is little or no oversight of this sort, mistakes and poor recording habits are far more likely to develop into a systemic problem. 

Responsibility: When there are no systems in place that require healthcare workers to note when they record patient data, there’s no trail that leads back to employees who engage in poor practices. As such, it’s crucial for healthcare organizations to require all employees who record patient data to attribute the notes to themselves. 

Regular updating: If there’s no structure in place that requires healthcare employees to update patient data regularly, it’s not very likely to get done. This being the case it’s vital that all organizations prioritize this practice and make it compulsory every time a patient receives care. 

Patient Data Is Key to Keeping the Public Safe

Though most people don’t think about it, patient data plays an incredibly important role in public safety. From helping experts respond to health crises to stopping the spread of diseases, it’s vital that patient data integrity is high. The more that healthcare organizations prioritize the accurate recording and updating of patient data, the more that public health will benefit.