The Importance of Patient Safety

As a healthcare consumer, I was not completely satisfied with the level of patient safety practices implemented at the primary care physician’s office that I went to at the time. The phsyican was a health care provider who demonstrated malfeasance since he only cared about receiving the payment first before even treating his patients, which caused a bit of confusion since it should not be all about the money especially if the physician has not seen the patient yet. However, I guess maybe in the past a patient or two did not pay for their visit and ruined it for everyone. He made me as well as other patients wait in the examination room for about an hour to two hours, and then he would briefly ask a few questions and at the most be finish with the visit within a matter of minutes that seemed to sometimes be unbelieveable, time wasted, and money. It was like he did not want to hear about the problems we had and if I even got him to do a thorough checkup, at the most it was about 5 minutes. And since he was one room from the next so quickly he probably was not washing his hands as much as needed or using the gloves as he was supposed to be. In the end, I only went to that doctor when I was in a car accident for some pain medication, checkup, or for a prescription refill. I believe that everything needs to be improved at that facility. I would hope that before seeing each patient that the assistants and the physician himself would follow universal precautions such as hand washing for preventing the spread of germs or proper disposal of sharps for patient safety. It would be helpful to provide a questionnaire guide to ask informative questions for the patient every time they visit for feedback on the services they recieved and in case anything has changed in their life such as the addition of new medication so the physician can avoid medical mistakes which would overall make the doctor and his staff a better place where people leave happy/healthier instead of sad/unheathier. Patients have the right to be treated the same and with the best quality of care available.