Nmc Code Of Safety In Nursing

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Patient safety in the words of Dodds and Kodate (2011) is definded by the avoidance and prevention of adverse outcomes or errors within a healthcare environment. It has become the highest health policy in the UK and and many other countries (Holme, 2009). The NMC Code of Conduct (2015), states that you must work within the limits of your compitence, exercising your professional duty of care and rasing any concerns you have immediatley that may put a patients’ safety at risk. Over the past few years, patient safety has been notified as a global importance, however more work remains to be done (WHO, 2004). The main goal of WHO (2004) patient safety project is to accelerate and facilitate patient safety improvements globally by leadership, teamwork …show more content…

The Code also emphasises the importance of raising concerns if you feel a patient needs extra support and protection (NMC, 2015). Remaining vigilant through-out your nursing career is an extremely important skill to have. Viligance as definded by Hirter and Van Nest (1995), is the state of maximal attention and psycological readiness to act and having the ability to detect and respond appropriately to any sign of danger. Using risk assessment tools helps maintain vigilance as they are subjected to judgement where possible as an essential part of patient care (NES, 2015b). As a student on placement using these risk assessment tools were an explicit way of assessing any developing risks (Deeks, 2015). The National Early Warning Score (NEWS) ensured early detection, clinical decision making and recommendations around the urgency of response required and the location for ongoing care (Day and Oxton, 2014). The frequency of this tool depends on the allocated score for the six simple physiological parameters (Royal College of Physicians, 2012). Another risk assessment tool used to decrease the risk of a patient safety incident is the waterlow tool. Waterlow is a simplistic tool which is practical for understanding the causes of a developing pressure ulcer (Judy, 2015). During placement, every patient had a waterlow risk assessment tool in place which emphasises the importance of pressure sore prevention. This tool is a systematic way to evaluate and re-evaluate individual patients who are deemed to be at risk (Judy, 2015). A patients’ weight may contribute to their level of risk developing a pressure sore. A MUST tool can be used to calculate patients BMI providing a total MUST score. This is done on admission then once every week. The importance of maintaining a MUST score is emphasised by Williams and Keir (2008) as their statistics show that hospital

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