Patient Safety: A Paramount Responsibility in Nursing

Patient safety is a large concern for practices, nurses and doctors. There are many tasks and precautions that can be taken to prevent accidents in the work place, whether it involves patients or not. Florence Nightingale once said “The very first canon of nursing, the first and last thing on which a nurse’s attention must be fixed is to keep the air within as pure as the air without”. This quote is argued to be an analogy for keeping the patient safe and to return them to the same condition as before they fell ill. Patient safety is one of many top priorities in a nurse’s creed, right next to caring for the patient and returning them to proper health. It is the nurse’s responsibility to keep the patient as comfortable as possible. This has

Not only would the patient have to be restrained, but imagine what a nurse would feel like if they saw a patient being irate. They could think that it is their fault and that the blame should be placed on them. This also comes back on the establishment as failure of care. So patient safety is extremely important for the reputation of the nurse and practice. A big part of patient safety is hygiene. According to prevention.com, sinks, door knobs and tissue boxes at hospitals and doctors’ offices are the most germ ridden spots in the world. Contagious patients are maintained and usually quarantined, but that does not always mean you are completely safe from getting those germs. Nurses come in and out of these rooms every day to treat other patients, in non-quarantined rooms. The good news is, nurses take so many hygienic precautions that it is almost impossible for germs to be spread to another patient to the point of them falling ill with that same disease. Nurses use gloves at almost all times when dealing with patients. Latex, rubber, or even latex-free gloves are most common, and are used when giving medications, drawing blood, changing bedpans or changing dressings on

For a nurse, trying to provide individualized care for a patient is extremely difficult to do, due to dealing with up to 20 patients a day. Assessing a patient’s needs and problems is first and foremost the most important thing for a nurse to do. Nurses are always caught between taking their time with a patient, and sorting out who needs care the most or whose condition is more severe. According to research done by the National Institute of Nursing found on nursingworld.org, patients who received 80% more of their care from RN’s had an 18.7% lower odds of readmission. Under the same circumstances, 1.9% had a shorter length of stay. Additionally, when there is a 10% increase in hiring of nurses, there is also a 10% decrease in the practice’s mortality rate. Some establishments are actually given higher pension compensations for quality of care based on statistics of their patient income and recovery time. This can be based on doctors and their performance, but there are some that are based solely on RN’s as well as the entire nursing staff and their performance with patients. In a private interview, registered nurse Whitney Sharp says “personally, as a charge nurse and a registered nurse, I make sure that the patient is comfortable, is receiving the right treatment and that the patient is monitored at all times. A patient can have a heart attack, loss of breath, or