Medical quality control ensures patient safety, comfort and satisfaction through monitoring products and services in healthcare facilities. Standards and protocols are defined to prevent hospital-acquired infections, surgical errors, and inadequate care. Consistency of care and patient comfort are also important. Pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers must meet legal standards and industry practices to protect health and safety.
Medical quality control is the monitoring of products and services provided in a medical environment for the purposes of patient safety, comfort and satisfaction. Quality control is an important aspect of healthcare services, and many large medical facilities have a quality control officer who focuses on this issue. Similar quality control measures are in place at pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to protect the safety of products that can be administered to patients.
In healthcare facilities, medical quality control is based on the definition of standards and protocols. Some may reflect regional laws that require facilities to take certain steps to protect patients, while others are part of industry standards and practices. Some facilities may have even more stringent standards based on experience and careful review. These can include things like always washing hands between patients, using standard questionnaires before surgery to avoid common mistakes, and requiring nurses to follow particular protocols when titrating medications for patients.
Safety is the primary concern of medical quality control. Healthcare professionals want to make sure that patients remain safe while they are being treated by preventing problems such as hospital-acquired infections, surgical errors or injuries caused by inadequate care. A quality control officer may wander through a facility auditing and supervising suppliers as they work, and hospital staff also attend classes to get up-to-date information on quality control and the measures they need to take for patient safety.
Hospitals usually also concern themselves with consistency of care, to make sure that all patients receive the same standard of care and that it is very high. Comfort and satisfaction are additional aspects of medical quality control, aimed at keeping patients as happy as possible during their treatments. In addition to being a core tenet of customer service, comfort also tends to increase the likelihood of a positive patient outcome, making it an important part of care.
In facilities where patients are not present and the goal is to produce products for the medical community, medical quality control is also very important. Pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers must meet stringent legal standards as well as follow common industry practices to protect health and safety. These include preventing contamination, ensuring products are of consistently good quality, and using standardized sizes and packaging so healthcare professionals can quickly identify the products they need. For example, medications that come in tablet form come in pre-set colors, shapes and sizes, with indicator markings printed on them to help pharmacists dispense the right medication and patients to identify their medications at a glance.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
