Dr. Emmanuel Srofenyo speaking at the event.
The Medical Director of the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, Dr Emmanuel Srofenyoh, has reiterated the facility’s resolve to ensuring the safety of patients who visit the health centre for medical care.
Dr. Srofenyoh said the regional hospital is prioritizing patients safety in areas such surgery, dispensing of medication, hospital acquired infections and healthcare waste management.
He said the move is to help minimise errors and injuries that usually occurred during service delivery at the facility.
Holding a stakeholders meeting to commemorate the World Patient Safety Day, Dr. Srofenyoh said the event is to create an opportunity for stakeholder engagement on the various safety systems put in place by the Hospital.
He said the meeting is also to draw the attention of the public to what the facility has been doing to achieve effective quality service delivery.
Dr Srofenyoh said currently the various departments under the Hospital, have developed their own protocols to prevent institutional errors.
Dr Srofenyoh indicated that the various protocols adopted by the facility’s departments, such as the appropriate storage and dispensing of medication, enhanced patient counselling and effective communication, quality leadership, and improved hand hygiene and sanitation practices, had resulted in a reduction in facility-acquired infections especially, relating to neonatal sepsis (cord infections), and surgical wound infections.
Head of Infection Prevention Control at the Hospital, Mavis Aggrey, said microbial organism infection sources could be from laboratories, incubators, washrooms, unsterilized surgical tools, due to non-adherence to strict Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) protocols and non-application of due diligence measures.
She said the hospital as part of activities has been organizing regular in-house training for its staff, saying the Covid-19 pandemic, had brought back lots of good practices including hand hygiene.
She said practice has lead to a significant drop in records of respiratory infections and common colds in its Out-Patient Department.
Ms Aggrey said there was also a designated Isolation facility for high risk patients to prevent cross- infection, constant and quality water supply, regular disinfection of the entire facility, clean washrooms and a designated facility for the proper waste disposal.
Head of Pharmacy, Joseph Agyei Tsiase, said the Hospital had in place an effective system for the procurement for safe, quality and cost effective medicines, proper storage to prevent deterioration, a drug and therapeutic Committee to ensure rational use of medication, and ensure the documentation of adverse drug resistance.
He outlined a chain of processes that were followed by the pharmacy department during drug dispensing, which included effective communication with patients and healthcare practitioners on the health history, to avoid adverse drug effects, to achieve the desired outcome of recovery.
Head of Surgery, Reuben Ngissah, explained that his Department had developed a system known as the “Time Out” process, to trigger or remind Surgeons to cross-check all they needed for each caesarean session to avoid mistakes.
He said a wound dressing labels among other things which was introduced had also yielded a record drop in infections over the past two years, and commended the staff for their hard work and commitment towards achieving patient safety and quality healthcare delivery at the Hospital.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri