Background: Standards of Joint Commission International emphasize on the organizational performance level in basic functional domains including patient right, patient care, medical safety and infection control. These standards are focused on two principles: expectations of the actual organizational performance and assessment of organizational capabilities to provide high quality and safe health...

Sammelweis first introduced the concept of infection control in hospitals in the mid-1800s but i t was not until about 20 years ago that the control of hospital infection has become such an important issue. In the United States, i t is estimated that approximately 5% of all hospital admissions acquire hospital infection.' The financial expense related to the management of these infections is es...

BACKGROUND The current US national discussions on patient safety are not based on a common language. This hinders systematic application of data obtained from incident reports, and learning from near misses and adverse events. OBJECTIVE To develop a common terminology and classification schema (taxonomy) for collecting and organizing patient safety data. METHODS The project comprised a syst...

BACKGROUND Pain affects more than 70% of cancer patients but is often undertreated. METHODS The authors review and present methodologies to maximize proper palliative approaches to this symptom for the majority of patients. RESULTS The World Health Organization's stepwise guide to pain control serves as an excellent basis for management. Around-the-clock dosing, using adjuvant treatments, a...

BACKGROUND Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has established, improving communication as a priority for improving patient safety since 2006. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate nursing students' communication abilities to recognize their strengths and weaknesses in communication skills. METHOD This cross-sectional study was carried out in 2014. T...

The American Society for Pain Management Nursing (ASPMN), in order to address sentinel alerts issued by JCAHO in 2004 and ISMP in 2005 concerning "PCA by Proxy", has developed a position statement and clinical practice recommendations on Authorized and Unauthorized (PCA by Proxy) Dosing of Analgesic Infusion Pumps, approved by the Board of Directors in June of 2006. In short, ASPMN does not sup...

ENSURING quality care in vascular and interventional radiology is the primary goal of the SIR Standards of Practice Committee. To achieve this goal, the Committee has previously defined the qualifications of physicians performing the procedures and the facilities that are required for safe diagnostic and interventional procedures. The next focus is on the assessment of quality care; this is don...

Dr. Couch is a medical quality management consultant serving providers and purchasers of health care services (including insurers and corporations) nationwide. He represents the 6,000 physician executives of the American College of Physician Executives and American College of Utilization Review Physicians at the JCAHO. He is associated with the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics of the...

T hefirst ambulatory surgery center was established in 1970 in Phoenix, Arizona by two surgeons with a vision of providing more convenient surgical services to their community. Twelve years later, Medicare approved the first payments to ambulatory surgery centers, sparking an era of substantial growth. By 1988, there were 1000 ambulatory surgery centers in the United States, and today more than...

The concept of this book is taken from the feature called, “Ask the Joint Commission,” in the journal, Hospital Pharmacy, written by Darryl Rich, a pharmacist from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, who is an expert on this topic. The same question and answer format is used in Ask the Joint Commission: Understanding JCAHO Requirements for Hospital Pharmacies, whi...