Investigation of patient safety and the use of medical equipment: A case study of Rwanda healthcare

Abstract

This thesis deals with patient safety and the use of medical equipment in Rwanda healthcare. Medical equipment is a key contributor to patient safety. Clinicians rely on medical equipment to provide healthcare, they trust others, including Biomedical Engineers, to make sure measurements and calibration are accurate at all times to facilitate precision in diagnosis, rehabilitation, and treatment of patients. As any wrong measurement due to lack of calibration could lead to catastrophic consequences. This could include death, disability, inaccurate diagnosis, misprescribion of medication. Medical errors are one of the leading five causes of death. In the healthcare industry, establishing an effective patient safety program is crucial. The aim of this study is to investigate patient safety programs and illustrate ways to improve patient safety while using medical equipment with Rwanda healthcare as a case . This study looks at the benefits, efficacy, effectiveness, safety, appropriateness, and cost-effective analysis of patient safety in medical equipment use. The tool utilised to gather the data needed for the thesis' was a questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using statistical analysis software SPSS version 21 and Microsoft Excel. Chi-square test analysis and Binary logistic regression analysis were used to test the correlation and significance between the dependent variable (availability of practices on the accuracy of medical equipment) and the independent variables (Parametric settings, testing of equipment, test of equipment after repairing, plan for test calibration, calibrated test cover all medical equipment). The alpha (α) level of 0.05 was used to determine the statistical significance of the data. More generally, the result showed that there is a significant, and correlation between the dependent and the independent variables. As an example, the Testing of equipment which is independent variable with p-values equal to 0.001 for testing the correlation and p-value of 0.008 for signicance test, the results showed that its pvalues are less than alpha of 0.05, therefore there is correlation and significance between variables.Based on the existing of this correlation and significance, the study findings demonstrated the necessity of adopting patient safety programs related to medical equipment when adding new technology, repairing, troubleshooting, or moving the equipment before it goes back to services for a better output of the parameters.