System Safety for the 21st Century, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 28Hospitals

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this chapter is to inform the safety practitioner about hospitals, their operations, challenges faced, the potential system safety interfaces and the application of system safety principles and tenants in order to achieve continuous improvement for patients, the hospital staff, and hospital facilities. The chapter covers general information and definitions, the types of hospitals, a typical hospital organization, challenges, emergency response, the system safety interface, a healthcare‐related case study related to system safety, other thoughts, and some conclusions.

The added purpose of the chapter is two‐fold in that it gives the safety professional an appreciation for the application of system safety to hospitals of all types, particularly to emergency situations, and also it is to provide insights to medical personnel to the value of system safety and its tenants as applied to the hospital environment.

One caveat in the discussion is that for several reasons, there is no plan to discuss hospital finances or the effects of national politics. Those factors are too dynamic and really beyond the scope of this system safety text.

General Information and Definitions

Types of Hospitals. While the types of hospitals may be and are categorized in several different ways, a typical categorization is:

General Hospital—A general hospital is a medical facility able to perform medical care over a wide range of health care services.

Teaching ...