To understand how treating consumers with dignity, respect and encouraging participation contributes to safe and quality care, there needs to be an understanding into what it means to take a patient centred care approach. The use of frameworks including the Australian Safety and Quality framework helps to guide healthcare workers through principals to ensure the highest quality and safe care is given within the healthcare setting. Nurses play a huge part in safe, ethical and quality patient care, as they work under the code of ethics, within their scope of practice and working within professional boundaries, all contributing to the best communication to ensure patients are treated with dignity, respect and are encouraged to participation in …show more content…
Safety of care can be recognized as, ensuring patients will receive optimum healthcare, without suffering from any preventable harm (ACSQHC, 2015a). Quality on the other hand is that the care that each patient receives will be individual to that person, while being safe and effective to treat patients with respect, compassion, empathy and dignity (ACSQHC 2011a, pp18). Nurses have a role in delivering patient care that is safe, ethical and to the best quality. The code of ethics for Australian nurse’s, (NMBA 2008) identifies that nurses have to value quality care for all people, assess quality nursing and healthcare for all people, and value culture of safety in nursing and healthcare. As these are written within the code of ethics for nursing professionals, there is a responsibility that nurses will commit to standing by these ethics while practicing, as these are outlined to respect, promote, protect and uphold the fundamental rights of nurses and patients to achieve quality and safe …show more content…
They also need to be able to communicate the delivery of care and procedures to patients to ensure safe and reliable care. In a random survey conducted over the telephone, and the review of medical records from patients recently admitted into acute care hospital by Weingart, S et al; (2011), the aim of the study was to understand the extent to which patients participated in their care and how it associates with quality of care and patient safety. In this study is was found that, when the patient were more involved with their treatment the quicker the identification of an adverse health event was communicated and pick up by the care team before this adverse health outcome occurred. With this information it can be recognised that when a patient does become more involved with their treatment, they can be given a better quality of care as they can reduce the affect of adverse events. This would also make the patient’s admission safer, as preventing adverse health outcomes or detecting that a patient was deteriorating earlier could potentially lead to the patient not becoming as affected by the arising adverse health outcome and decrease their hospital
Nurses are central to patient care and patient safety in hospitals. Their ability to speak up and be heard greatly impacts their own work satisfaction and patient outcomes. Open communication should have been encouraged within the healthcare team caring for Tyrell. Open communication cultures lead to better patient care, improved outcomes, and better staff satisfaction (Okuyama, 2014). Promoting autonomy for all members of the healthcare team, including the patient and his parents, may have caused the outcome to have been completely different. A focus on what is best for the patient rather than on risks clinicians may face when speaking up about potential patient harm is needed to achieve safe care in everyday clinical practice (Okuyama,
A code of ethics provides a standard by which nurses conduct themselves and their practice, observing ethical obligations of the profession and providing quality care. To achieve its purpose, a code of ethics must be understood, internalized, and used by nurses in all aspects of their work” (Aliakvari, 2015, p. 494).
The Australian Commission On Safety And Quality in Health care was founded as a powerful body to reform Health care system in Australia. It was established on 1st june 2006 in an incorporated form to lead and coordinate numerous areas related to safety and quality in healthcare across Australia (Windows into Safety and Quality in Health Care, 2011). The commission’s work programs include; development of advice, publications and resources for healthcare teams, healthcare professionals, healthcare organisations and policy makers (Australian Commission On Safety And Quality in Health care). Patients, carers and members of public play a vital role in giving shape to commission’s recommendations thereby ensuring safe, efficient and effective delivery of healthcare services. The commission acknowledges patients and carers as a partner with health service organisations and their healthcare providers. It suggests the patients and carers should be involved in decision making, planning, evaluating and measuring service. People should exercise their healthcare rights and be engaged in the decisions related to their own healthcare and treatment procedures. ...
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.
Nurses everywhere face problems and challenges in practice. Most of the challenges occur due to a struggle with the use of ethical principles in patient care. Ethical principles are “basic and obvious moral truths that guide deliberation and action,” (Burkhardt, Nathaniel, 2014). Ethical principles that are used in nursing practice include autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, veracity, confidentiality, justice, and fidelity. These challenges not only affect them, but the quality of care they provide as well. According to the article, some of the most frequently occurring and most stressful ethical issues were protecting patient rights, autonomy and informed consent to treatment, staffing problems, advanced care planning, and surrogate decision making (Ulrich et. al, 2013). The ethical issue of inadequate staffing conflicts with the principle of non-maleficence.
...huge responsibilities to the patient’s that the nurse cares for. These responsibilities require the nurse to maintain the safest environment possible for the patient. To do that the nurse must be able to meet the character requirements written about in this paper. Ethics, integrity, accountability, responsibility, and boundaries, keeps everyone in a safe environment. Without these attributes the door opens for questionable behaviors to occur inside of the hospital or other environments. Once the behaviors are allowed to occur, then the standards that nurse’s standby will diminish. Standards such as these do not just belong in the clinical setting. These are standards that everyone should live by in their day to day life. The Board of Nursing topics discussed here, are the foundation for the moral fiber that each person should weave within into their lives.
Nurse’s intent to provide the best therapeutic care to their patients but in doing so, question is, are they crossing their professional boundaries? Nursing is a profession that changes according to economic viability, technological advances, and milestones in teaching and patients demands. In today’s society, nurses are often challenged with crossing their professional boundaries in decision making or ethical boundaries which is very complex to define due to the advances in technologies, higher qualifications of society and demands by patients and relative; this is a reality. Further, nurses like any other are humans and they have this skill of humanity which is both hard to gauge and never been measured.
Standards are important aspects of nursing that a nurse must learn and implement every day for the rest of their nursing career. These standards provide for a nurse’s competence in the quality of care they deliver to the public. Standards offer a necessary guidance to nurses everywhere in an effort to ensure that people are treated correctly and ethically. Patients expect nurses to have a general knowledge of the medical realm and to know exactly what it is they –as nurses- are responsible for. Nurses need to have a sense of professionalism that enable the patient to feel safe and secure, knowing that a competent person is caring for him. A lack of professionalism does the opposite, making it impossible for a patient to trust or respect the nurse caring for him. Standards of nursing, if utilized correctly, give the nurse that sense of professionalism the patient is expecting. It insures for the safety of the patient and allows the nurse to provide quality health care that is expected of a medical professional.
Ethics asses the values, morals, and principles of nurses. Legal codes or laws are rules established by our government. It’s important that nurses have a clear and comprehensive understanding of ethical and legal codes within their career. The understanding of these codes is essential for nurses to safely practice and to protect their patients. Nurses must abide by these principles or face the consequences of legal action. These principles include autonomy, utilitarianism, confidentiality, and many others. Autonomy is the agreement to respect ones right to determine a course of action, while utilitarianism is what is best for most people as defined in American Nurses Association. In order to give you a
In today’s health care system, “quality” and “safety” are one in the same when it comes to patient care. As Florence Nightingale described our profession long ago, it takes work and vigilance to ensure we are doing the best we can to care for our patients. (Mitchell, 2008)
Because nurses are the largest group of healthcare providers, they are in the best position to improve patient safety and quality of care. While teaching and preparing students to become nurses, nurse educators have a very important role in helping to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of upcoming nurses related to patient safety. Healthcare professionals, such as nurses, are highly skilled and well educated, but the healthcare system continues to be disrupted by quality and safety issues.
The four fundamental nursing responsibilities of promoting health, preventing illness, optimizing health and alleviating the ill are represented in the code of ethics. (Arnold & Boggs, 2016) One can say that the code of ethics are rules that a nurse needs to follow in order to effectively communicate and protect the patients. The American Nurse Association provided the code of ethics to guide nurses to ensure that patient’s care, safety, rights and health are well cared for and well managed. Models like Utilitarian, deontological, and the human rights-based all contribute in answering dilemmas that can arise with a patient. Thus, explaining what some of the code of ethics are, and how the code of ethics influence our responsibilities as a nurse will impact the overall care of the
Nursing surrounds the concept of patient care physically, mentally and ethically. The therapeutic relationship that is created is built on the knowledge and skills of the nurse and relies on patient and nurse trusting one another. The use of nursing skills can ensure these boundaries are maintained, it allows for safe patient care. Professional boundaries are the line that nurses cannot cross, involving aspects such as patient confidentiality and privacy, ensuring legal aspects of nursing and the boundaries put in place are not breached. However, nurses accepting financial or personal gain from patient can also cross these professional boundaries. It is only through education in this area that the rights of patients can be preserved, as well as the nursing standards. Through education in areas such as confidentiality, boundaries can remain in tact and the patient care can remain within the zone of helpfulness.
She further identified seven concepts that are essential to current nursing practice, she stated that,” Based on the acronym FLOWERSTM, they include fundamentals of care, leadership at the bedside, ownership of outcomes, wisdom, ethics, relational competence, and skilled caring.” (Sprayberry, 2014, p.123). Nursing professionals play several key roles, which directly affects client outcomes, such as, critically thinking while being the patient-caregiver, advocate and educator along with coordinating and collaborating with the various members of the multidisciplinary health care delivery team. Nurses always prioritize excellent patient safety and care every day and collect information and recognize the practices that need improvement. For example, the process of identification and documentation of nursing-sensitive outcomes that are a direct result of nursing assessments and interventions. Nursing professionals take leadership roles concerning promoting safety and quality through collecting evidence, analyzing and interpreting the data necessary to improve practice. Armed with the edge of working closely with clients, nursing professionals can identify opportunities of cost-effectiveness without compromising on QI. Through being patient advocates, nurses ensure, that health care clients receive good quality and
Nursing is based on the ethical value of a commitment to promoting well-being by providing competent and compassionate care. Guidelines and codes are beneficial because they state values, obligations and limitations. These guidelines are designed to help nurse's think and resolve ethical and professional questions and issues. The nurse is faced with many legal and ethical dilemmas. One of the ...