Speak Up Brochure

Through The National Patient Safety Goals, the Joint Commission plays a critical role in
promoting patient safety. One strategy for enhancing patient safety is reducing the number of
avoidable hospitalization. Such provides an opportunity to improve the quality of care and life
and minimize healthcare spending. Avoidable hospitalizations are associated with rising costs
that impede elective health care planning, affecting patients’ daily lives. Medical control invests
resources and develops various tools to help home health providers improve medication
management. The promotion team introduced a “Be Safe & Take” Clinician Enhancement
Program to educate patients, caregivers, and health providers. The program provides informal
reading materials such as brochures to enhance education to home health workers hence reducing
medication management and reducing avoidable hospitalizations.
Introduction of the Brochure

The title of this brochure is captivating; “Speak up: Avoid a return trip to the hospital.” It
seeks to sensitize patients discharged from the hospital that there are some things they can do to
avoid going back to the hospital. Before and after the patient leaves the hospital, the brochure is
divided into two parts. The primary target group for this article is the patient and caregivers. The
secondary target is the health care providers who provide information at the hospital. The other
group is the community which provides significant specialists such as case managers to mobilize
community resources such as adult daycare and meals on wheels.
Summary of the Article

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The brochure has two basic parts; before and after the patient leaves the hospital. Before
the patient is discharged, physicians inform the patient and caregivers about their condition. The
information captured in this part is about the patient’s procedures in the hospital, the probability
of having a new medical condition, food to be avoided, and possible referrals. Then they are
informed about medicines available and how they should be taken to enhance patient safety.
Some of the information captured in this section explains medical prescriptions and the possible
side effects of taking medicine.
After the patient leaves the hospital, the care providers give information depending on
their condition and the type of care they might need. The brochure covers various topics,
including regular doctor visits, home care, community services, and nursing care center. Regular
doctor’s visits allow individuals to get information regarding their condition, treatment, and
follow-up care. Regarding home care, the brochure provides various services offered to the
patients in their homes. Such include nursing care, personal care, and delivery of medical
supplies. Also, communities provide services to help patients stay in their homes, including
mobilizing resources for adult day care and personal care services. The last topic captured in the
brochure is nursing care centers that provide similar short-term care to the hospital. An example
of nursing care provided includes physical, occupational, or speech therapy.

Communication

The patient-provider relationship is a foundation of patient engagement. Whenever the
provider communicates well with the patient, it improves patient satisfaction by making them
feel valued. When communicating with the patient, the provider needs to be empathetic. The best
communication practices fall under empathy communication (Schoenthaler et al., 2018). The
providers should approach each exchange with the patient sensitively to enhance patient

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satisfaction. Besides, the language used in communication should be direct and easy for the
patient to understand. Precisely, the care provider should avoid jargon by all means. For
example, in the brochure, the language used to communicate can be understood by an average
reader. It has some subheadings to allow the patient and care providers access to the most
relevant points. Every part of this brochure is patient-centered hence the probability of enhancing
patient satisfaction once they do the reading. The mode of communication used in this case
makes the patient feel that they are not alone in the healing journey. There are people like the
nurses in nursing centers, the community, and caregivers.
Personal Reflection

The topic of “Avoid returns to the hospital” is interesting. I can attribute my interest in
this topic to my upbringing and the experiences I had after losing my father to cancer. The
information could have helped us follow the medical prescriptions and seek the nursing center’s
care for my ailing father. Such could have helped avoid his in and out of the hospital, which was
equally costly. The home caregivers could also have provided palliative care, increasing his
quality of life. The information I gained from this topic will allow me to handle such a situation
better if it presents itself in the future.

Evaluation of the Brochure

Research postulates that a good percentage of patients about 65 years have been
hospitalized due to possible medication issues. Some of those admitted to nursing homes have
shown an inability to manage their medication. Addressing such problems is complex, especially
because most patients experience a change of care from a place where medication may have been
changed without the caregiver offering enough information or providing a self-management

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coach (Sheehan et al., 2018). Besides, people using home care amenities are considered delicate,
especially because they live in loneliness and have no one to help them through the medication.
Home-based care patients may either have formal home caregivers or not, and different
physicians mostly prescribe their medications. Such makes them vulnerable to medication errors
and therefore needs ideal management. All home-based care patients need to review their
medications before they undertake them. The review provides them with the knowledge of drug
reactions such as side effects, noncompliance with medication, and ineffective drug therapy.
The home health quality improvement package is quite dynamic. It supports
modifications to medication management by communicating to all teams, including patients and
caregivers. The package incorporates different elements that enhance efficient management,
including adequate education and behavior change. Caregiver and patient education are critical
in enhancing medication management. The program includes an interdisciplinary approach,
simplification, and reconciliation, which benefits from the home well-being care providers like
the support worker and home health aides (Mathis, 2018). The “Be Safe & Take” program is
designed to create awareness using the nationally available tools and resources to provide
consistent and reliable instructions.
The program is initiated by nurses, clinicians, and therapists—home therapists complete
admissions and comprehensive assessments, including medication in-home health organizations
(Mathis, 2018). Therapists rely on clinicians to review medications. The program is beneficial
not only to the elderly population but also to young people. It increases patient safety and
satisfaction since the program s in the clinical assessments and interventions. Besides, the
program goes beyond patient education to improving medication management.

Conclusion

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The home health quality improvement package program is significant in care provision. It
creates awareness by educating all members of the medication management team. The
implication is helping in improving the application of home care services and reducing
hospitalizations.

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Reference

Mathis, V. (2018). Preventing Avoidable Hospitalizations from Long Term Care Facilities;
through a Collaborative Care Model
Schoenthaler, A., Rosenthal, D. M., Butler, M., & Jacobowitz, L. (2018). Medication adherence
improvement is similar to shared decision-making preference or a longer patient-provider
relationship. The American Board of Family Medicine Journal, 31(5), 752-760.
Sheehan, O. C., Kharrazi, H., Carl, K. J., Leff, B., Wolff, J. L., Roth, D. L., … & Boyd, C. M.
(2018). Helping older adults improve their medication experience (HOME) by addressing
medication regimen complexity in-home healthcare. Home healthcare now, 36(1), 10.