Patient safety is the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of health care and the reduction of risk of unnecessary harm associated with health care to an acceptable minimum.

Dr. Vivek Kaser, Associate Medical Data Review Manager, IQVIA is an established and dedicated Medical Doctor who is committed to carrying out all duties in accordance with theoretical and ethical clinical practices and protocols.

IQVIA is a provider of biopharmaceutical development and commercial outsourcing services, focused primarily on Phase I-IV clinical trials and associated laboratory and analytical services, including consulting services

Pandemic has given a lot of insights to us

Dr. Vivek shares his views, “Patient safety definitely is a top priority at an individual level from the patient's perspective, as well as from the doctors perspective, because we are the health care workers taking care of the patients also if you look from the product perspective, it is important from the government or agencies which are responsible to take care of the patients or for the people, so, it is definitely like an important factor, which has especially emerged out of during this COVID pandemic. The reason being is because nobody has actually anticipated that COVID will play such a catastrophic role in everybody's life and nobody was prepared, how to deal with the situation how to make people follow basic etiquettes or things, which, people normally take for granted. So, I think definitely this pandemic has given a lot of insights to us, the patient and everyone who is around us to understand how and what, safety is to them, and also safety to other people,” he says.

Giving training is also important 

Dr. Vivek explains, “Apart from just whatever we have been instructed to follow, the guidelines, wearing PPEs or wearing a mask at the public places, using sanitization at home or workplace or while traveling, apart from that, giving the training is also important, you know from a person who has not never been exposed, how to wear it, to even train, how to wear a PPE, how to wear a mask. These are basic etiquettes, which you have to teach. And for healthcare workers, definitely, we are more accustomed to or maybe more used to all these things, but still, inculcating or imbibing those habits for example, in hospital settings, I worked in the emergency setting; you see a lot of patients that you don't have time to take a breath. Now in such a situation, if you're asking me to sanitize after seeing, or touching on subjects and going or maybe even touching a file and going touching to another subjects file, I'm not talking about two patients from one file to another, you have to use this sanitization properly. So those things, even for me were difficult, but you have to take a lead. And you have to set a precedent for people around you, the nurses, the housekeeping staff everywhere in the, medical fraternity should try and follow it. And that is because we don't have anything but the prevention as we are wearing PPEs not the patients, so we don't want to expose them and we have to take utmost precautions to safeguard ourselves and also to safeguard our interest or the life of the patients who are around us,” he says.

We work in a digital world

Dr. Vivek explains, “This is very pertinent to what I'm doing today. We work in a digital world, we get, lots of clinical trials, which are going on, we review those data as make clinical judgments out of it. However, before this COVID pandemic, we used to have, regular follow-ups, however because of this COVID pandemic, we cannot risk, the life of a person to go out of the house visit the facility to check some documents, so digitalization of those documents so that it becomes easier for the person so that they don't have to step out of the house. So minimizing those things has definitely played an important role. Again, for you know, we're talking about COVID. So, testing for the COVID, we are talking about something which is very invasive, I would say, although people may differ with me, taking a swab from the mouth or nose, is an invasive procedure. Now, we are devising certain things with which we can, take or maybe presumptive analysis done for the subjects or like for people who can be at high risk of getting the infection. I'm not just talking about Arogya Setu, it's a very good app owned by the Government of India, but we are talking about more and more definitive answer towards the diagnosis and not just that you are at high risk, but telling them how important it is for them to go and get a check done. So, definitely like more and more digitalization is helping especially during this COVID pandemic when nobody actually wants to step out of the house, but at the same time they want to get the things done, you cannot just sit and do nothing. So, you have to get things done. At the same time, you have to take utmost precaution not stepping out,” he says.

Patient safety is ensured at various levels

Dr. Vivek sheds light on the topic, “From what I understand is these are done at various levels. So, if a patient comes to me, I hear from the history then after hearing the history if I have heard right or left I'm just giving an example then while I'm going doing the examination am I touching the right side or the left side, where I am eliciting the pain. So, history examination what you are documenting is important, how you are communicating to your colleagues or stop that for example, if this patient is posted for surgery that you have marked the surgical site. So, they should be very clear and it should be stepwise that tell everybody, for example, if it's right side then if it is done at various levels, everyone should mark it as right , if anyone has marked left that should be taken cognizance off and you should try and rectify or maybe revisit to understand why this person is marked as left. So, this is what for the surgical side misses. Then, sometimes the sutures are wrongly placed on the surgical side can go wrong. I believe that we are more going towards the digital frame now, more doctors write the prescription on the laptop rather than having a handwritten one so that the interpretation should not go wrong. We are going towards more of generic to avoid medication errors. Pharmacy - I think I cannot speak on behalf of pharmacy, but I think government of India has ordered the agencies to tighten a little bit so that the pharmacy takes the professional job seriously and they should give the medication what has been prescribed, if they have any doubt they should rather consult a doctor rather giving any medication which they feel will be a substitute. So these all things have been done to minimize the risk to ensure the safety of the subjects and patients,” he says.

Edited By- Rabia Mistry Mulla