Specific Standard Identified
Health care is one of the basic elements of the proper development of humanity today. To ensure that health care services are presented in proper ways to the people in need of them, organizations like the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO) has developed a set of specific standards that regulate every single aspect of patient – hospital relations and protect the rights of both sides in any dispute. One of the basic groups of these standards is the one that deals with patient-focused functions of hospitals, i. e. the patient education standard, or PC.6.10 (Miller & Capps, 1997, p. 55).
Background on the Specific Standard
In more detail, the JCAHO patient education standard PC.6.10 states that “the patient receives education and training specific to the patient’s needs and as appropriate to the care, treatment, and services provided” (JCAHO, 2006). Only if the standard is fully complied with by the hospital, it can obtain the JCAHO accreditation for further work. The rationale behind the standard is to provide patients with all necessary knowledge for in-hospital and after-hospital treatment, development, use of medication, and overall health care safety. Thus, ideas of proper medication use and patient safety are elements of the PC.6.10 standard (Anonymous, 2002, p. 419; JCAHO, 2006; Wanzer, 2005, p. 471).
Research Data
Further on, the research of the patient education standard PC.6.10 provides a more in-depth understanding of the implications it provides to patients and hospitals. Longo, Hewett, Ge, Schubert, and Kiely (2007) argue that the discussed standard is one of the basic steps taken by JCAHO to ensure such a vital element of health care process as patient safety (pp. 188 – 189). Wanzer (2005, p. 471) and Miller & Capps (1997) discuss the standard in the context of safe medication use, while the document issued by JCAHO directly allows seeing the architecture of the PC.6.10 standard that includes “the plan care, treatment, and services; basic health practices and safety; safe and effective use of medications; nutrition interventions”, etc (JCAHO, 2006).
Analysis of the Data
Accordingly, the analysis of the above-presented background and research data allows seeing the whole potential of the discussed JCAHO PC.6.10 standard regulating patient education. Specifically, the comprehensive nature of the standard allows forecasting the sustainable development of health care services’ quality in hospitals that fully comply with PC.6.10. At the same time, patients that are treated in such hospitals have all grounds to expect safe and proper health care services and after-hospital life as far as PC.6.10 requires the hospitals to prepare patients for situations when they will need to make important decisions regarding medication use on their own.
Personal Opinion on the Specific Standard
So, the above discussed JCAHO PC.6.10 standard for patient education in hospitals can be generally assessed as a necessary item in the set of standards developed for improving U.S. health care systems as such. The reasons for such an evaluation include the comprehensive character of the standard and its potential for ensuring the safety of patients during their stay in hospitals as well as after checking out from hospitals. At the same time, the practical usefulness of the discussed standard should be further researched and assessed using the specific examples and data of the studies with wide scopes of samples and participants.
References
Anonymous. (2002). JCAHO’s new medication use standards will sharpen safety focus, require more detail. The formulary, 37(8), 419, 4 pgs.
JCAHO. (2006). X-Plain Patient Education and Documentations System. Web.
Longo, D., Hewett, J., Ge, B., Schubert, S., and Kiely, R. (2007). Hospital Patient Safety: Characteristics of Best-Performing Hospitals. Journal of Healthcare Management, 52(3), 188 – 204.
Miller, B., & Capps, E. (1997). Meeting JCAHO patient-education standards. Nursing Management, 28(5), 55, 4 pgs.
Wanzer, L. J. (2005). Implementing National Patient Safety Goal 3: Association of Operating Room Nurses. AORN Journal, 82(3), 471, 473 – 4.