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Essays on patient safety improvements
Essays on patient safety improvements
Essays on patient safety improvements
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During the care of patient ensuring safety and quality is one of the biggest challenges in health care setting across the world. As I had worked as a Nurse Team Leader in an acute care set up, I believe that harm prevention is one of the fundamental aspects while providing care to patients as it leads to increased morbidity and mortality rate with economic burden. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2011) reported 80,000 catheter related blood stream infections occurring annually in US hospitals leading to increased hospital stay, patient suffering and expended financial resources. Now days, patient safety has been very much recognized as priority target of any organization In order to gain trust of patient by achieving the standards …show more content…
Nurses work in a multiple context and always play a vital role in transforming healthcare in accordance to protect patient from harm however it is seen that organization are not much supportive towards nurses. Nurses have been taught in their academic program to be advocates of patient safety, raise voices, and question physicians in case of wrong order. But, if we look into real practice it is sometimes different scenario. Nurses are suppressed by the physicians, therefore, they fear to argue them. Sometimes they are scared of getting their professional relation ruined. In addition, Nurses also face the lack of support from management in doing transforming efforts. Which ultimately cause job dissatisfaction and frustration Moreover, Mason (2008) also supported that many times on night shift, patient care suffers as the on call doctors are sleeping and nurses are reluctant to call due to fear of having disruptive behavior by physicians. Those incidences in which patient suffers due to delayed response by physicians, forgotten to send any required investigation or unnecessary antibiotic prescribed by physician will considered as practice variance rather than errors though they are in line with the definition of error. Instead of correcting the misconception, our system appreciates and …show more content…
With increasing rates of harms, increasing efforts are required by all health care organizations to transform practices to reduce the risk of harms. Along with all other health care teams, nurses can play a significant role in ensuring patient safety by establishing care related policies and procedures, educating, disseminating and ensuring its compliance for patient care processes. Roger et al (2007) mentioned that procedural errors accounted for almost a third of total errors like vigorous suction in high intracranial pressure patients or head elevation to spinal surgery patient etc. Therefore, risk factors related to processes should be examined for their role in error prevention, discovery and correction. Further, we need to develop and implement some harm reduction program to attain international patient safety goals (IPSG) during patient care. There are various barriers such as lack of organization support and authority, lack of involvement in quality initiatives, interruptions during work, long working hours and fear of disciplinary actions etc. faced by nurses leading to decrease contribution of nurses in future harm prevention. Therefore, organization and nurses’ leaders need to establish some strategies to overcome these barriers. Organization needs to appreciate the role of nurses so they can also participate in detecting, reporting and preventing most of the hospital incidence. Organization
Patients Safety is the most crucial about healthcare sector around the world. It is defined as ‘the prevention of patients harm’ (Kohn et al. 2000). Even thou patient safety is shared among organization members, Nurses play a key role, as they are liable for direct and continuous patients care. Nurses should be capable of recognizing the risk of patients and address it to the other multi disciplinary on time.
Safety is a primary concern in the health care environment, but there are still many preventable errors that occur. In fact, a study from ProPublica in 2013 found that between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year suffer preventable harm in the hospital (Allen, 2013). Safety in the healthcare environment is not only keeping the patient safe, but also the employee. If a nurse does not follow procedure, they could bring harm to themselves, the patient, or both. Although it seems like such a simple topic with a simple solution, there are several components to what safety really entails. Health care professionals must always be cautious to prevent any mishaps to their patients, especially when using machines or lifting objects, as it has a higher
Patient safety and quality care is very essential for the preventive, curative and promotive health care of the patient. Patient safety indicators are those indicators that help to provide care with patient safety. Patient safety indicators should always be measurable. There is a vital role of nurses and health care professionals in promoting and maintaining patient safety and quality care in the workplace. It is patient’s right to receive proper and safe health care from the health care team. Nurses are highly responsible for the improvement of health care as well as prevention and management of patient safety indicators through providing patient centered care and evidence based practice. There are different patient safety indicators such as nosocomial infections, fall injury, medication error, pressure sore, transfuse reaction and so on. These should be prevented, early diagnosed and given appropriate management by the health care team for providing patient safety. Here I am going to discuss about one of the patient safety indicators that is Catheter associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) and it is one of the most common nosocomial infection among others.
Safety is focused on reducing the chance of harm to staff and patients. The 2016 National Patient Safety Goals for Hospitals includes criteria such as using two forms of identification when caring for a patient to ensure the right patient is being treated, proper hand washing techniques to prevent nosocomial infections and reporting critical information promptly (Joint Commission, 2015). It is important that nurses follow standards and protocols intending to patients to decrease adverse
O’Daniel, M., & A.H., R. (2008). Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Retrieved from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2637/
Another factor that influences being a safe and professional nurse is having the right attitude. This will help you develop your nursing skills better if you have a positive attitude, because you may work with a team of registered nurses but you must recognize that each of you have your strengths and weaknesses. You must value each nurse for their expertise and skills, and always be willing to learn and accept feedback to help improve yourself. As a nurse, you may be great at starting IVs, while another nurse may be great at talking to patients, another nurse may be great at wound care, etc. Overall, recognizing when to ask for help is a good quality in nursing, this isn’t as a disfavor to yourself but actually a service to your patient, because
Safety is non-negotiable. Because of nurse leader's perspective on the causes of errors and their prevention, they are an indispensable part of a multidisciplinary team that finds innovative solutions to improve safety that ultimately benefits the patient.
Central lines (CL) are used frequently in hospitals throughout the world. They are placed by trained health care providers, many times nurses, using sterile technique but nosocomial central line catheter associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) have been a dangerous issue. This is a problem that nurses need to pay particular attention to, and is a quality assurance issue, because CLABSI’s “are associated with increased morbidity, mortality, and health care costs” (The Joint Commission, 2012). There have been numerous studies conducted, with the objective to determine steps to take to decrease CLABSI infection rate, and research continues to be ongoing today. The problem is prevalent on many nursing units, with some patients at great risk than others, but some studies have shown if health care providers follow the current literature, or evidence based guidelines, CLABSIs can be prevented (The Joint Commission, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to summarize current findings related to this topic, and establish a quality assurance (QA) change plan nurses can implement for CL placement and maintenance, leading to decreased risk of nosocomial CLABSIs.
Patient safety one of the driving forces of healthcare. Patient safety is defined as, “ the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of healthcare or as the prevention of errors and adverse events caused by the provision of healthcare rather than the patient’s underlying disease process. (Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, &Turunen, 2013)”. It was just as important in the past as it is day. Our healthcare field continues to strive to make improvement toward safer care for patients across the country.
Safety competency is essential for high-quality care in the medical field. Nurses play an important role in setting the bar for quality healthcare services through patient safety mediation and strategies. The QSEN definition of safety is that it “minimizes risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performance.” This papers primary purpose is to review and better understand the importance of safety knowledge, skills, and attitude within nursing education, nursing practice, and nursing research. It will provide essential information that links health care quality to overall patient safety.
The patient safety program in hospital setting is intended to reduce medical errors and hazardous conditions by assuring an environment that inspires error identification, reporting and prevention through education, system enhancement for any adverse occasions such that information about sentinel events that frequently occurs in health care are built in the system progressively for risk reduction. Through education component, proper and effective orientation and training that emphasizes clinical and non-clinical aspects of patient safety, including an inte...
“Nursing Accidents Unleash Silent Killers”, according to the article titled “A Wake-up Call” (Marilyn S. Fetter 2011). Mistakes or errors implemented by nurses nationwide not only kill, but injure thousands. This perception of practicing nurses continuously causing errors and mistakes can be changed and something can be done about it. However, rare cases of nursing malpractice are still on the rise. Malpractice is a serious case in which it can be avoided completely by a skilled nurse who follows standards and safety precautions to accurately and correctly care for each and every patient.
Mitchell, P. H. (2008). Defining patient safety and quality care an evidence-based handbook for nurses. Rockville,Maryland: Hughes. DOI: //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2681/
The rate of errors and situations are seen as chances for improvement. A great degree of preventable adversative events and medical faults happen. They cause injury to patients and their loved ones. Events are possibly able to occur in all types of settings. Innovations and strategies have been created to identify hazards to progress patient and staff safety. Nurses are dominant to providing an atmosphere and values of safety. As an outcome, nurses are becoming safety leaders in the healthcare environment(Utrich&Kear,
Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency coordination task force with the help of government agencies. These government agencies are responsible for making health pol-icies regarding patient safety to which every HCO must follow (Schulman & Kim, 2000).