Patient Safety Flashcards
7 cards from real CPHRM practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Patient Safety flashcards as text
Which of the following is an example of a high-reliability organization (HRO) principle applied to healthcare?
Answer: Preoccupation with failure and sensitivity to operations
HROs maintain chronic unease about potential failures and stay attuned to operational conditions that could lead to harm.
When conducting a root cause analysis (RCA) after a patient fall, which question is MOST appropriate to ask?
Answer: What system or process conditions allowed this to happen?
RCA focuses on system-level contributing factors rather than individual blame to prevent recurrence of the event.
A surgical team skips the pre-operative timeout due to time pressure. The GREATEST patient safety risk this creates is:
Answer: Wrong-site surgery or incorrect procedure
The surgical timeout is the final verification step designed specifically to prevent wrong-site, wrong-procedure, and wrong-patient surgeries.
Which safety strategy involves double-checking a high-alert medication dose independently before administration?
Answer: Independent double-check
Independent double-checks require two clinicians to separately verify a calculation or drug without conferring, reducing the chance of shared cognitive error.
A healthcare organization implements electronic medication reconciliation at every care transition. This intervention PRIMARILY addresses which patient safety risk?
Answer: Medication discrepancies and omission errors at handoff
Medication reconciliation ensures an accurate and complete medication list is maintained across transitions of care, preventing errors of omission or duplication.
Under the Leapfrog Group safety standards, which hospital practice has the STRONGEST evidence for reducing ICU mortality?
Answer: Intensivist-led ICU physician staffing
Leapfrog standards include 24/7 intensivist coverage in ICUs, which is associated with significant reductions in mortality and complications.
Which of the following BEST describes 'alarm fatigue' in a hospital setting?
Answer: Desensitization to alarms due to high frequency of non-actionable alerts
Alarm fatigue occurs when an excessive number of alarms causes staff to become desensitized, increasing the risk that critical alarms will be missed.