Patient Safety and Quality Improvement
What this domain tests
How allied health staff prevent avoidable harm and improve systems: correct identification, medication and specimen safety, falls and pressure injury prevention, structured handover, incident reporting, root cause analysis and small-cycle improvement.
Core rules
- Identify patients with two independent identifiers before every procedure, specimen or transfer.
- Report incidents and near misses through the non-punitive system; the aim is system learning, not blame.
- Use a structured handover so risk information travels with the patient.
- Screen and document risk (falls, pressure injury, malnutrition, allergy) and act on the score.
- Improve through measurable cycles: define the problem, measure a baseline, test a change, remeasure, then sustain.
Worked example
A physiotherapy assistant labels a blood specimen with the wrong patient's sticker but notices before dispatch. Correct action: stop, quarantine the specimen, inform the nurse and laboratory, report the near miss, and complete a quick review of the labelling step. The system answer, such as two-person verification at the bedside, is what prevents recurrence. Simply apologising and discarding the tube leaves the weakness in place.
Traps that cost marks
- Reporting only events that caused harm and ignoring near misses.
- Writing an incident report as a personal criticism of a colleague.
- Treating a risk score as paperwork rather than a trigger for action.
- Closing an improvement cycle without remeasurement or staff feedback.