The Importance Of A Safe Environment In Health

Introduction

Being able to maintain a safe environment in healthcare reflects a level of persistence and compassion for the welfare of patients, that is just as important as any other aspect of care, if not more. Safety systems are in place to prevent harm not only to the patient or their families and friends but also to anyone who works in healthcare. As the IOM points out,

“…a safer environment for patients would also be a safer environment for workers and vice versa, because both are tied to many of the same underlying cultural and systemic issues. As cases in point, hazards to healthcare workers because of lapses in infections control, fatigue, or faulty equipment may result in injury not only to workers but also to others in the institution”

And knowing limitations to these strengths is fundamental when developing a safe system. “When these system factors and the sensory, behavioral, and cognitive characteristics of providers are poorly matched, substandard outcomes frequently occur with respect to effort expended, quality of care, job satisfaction, and perhaps most important, the safety of patients” (Henriksen K, et al. 2008). The IOM also identified key factors to aid implementation of this principal, most of which seem common knowledge but are still not found as a standard from institution to institution These factors include: designing jobs for safety, avoiding reliance on memory, use constraints and forcing functions, avoiding reliance on vigilance, simplifying key processess, and standardization of work

Healthcare workers are regularly faced with new equipment, new procedures, changes in policies, and system vulnerabilities to name a few. Currently, hospitals hold annual competencies for nurses and staffmembers while licensing organization require a certain amount of CEU’s or CME’s every 2-3 years to maintain an active license. But beyond this, the IOM has recommmendations for the healthcare facility itself to establish a learning environment. These include: using simulation whenever possible, encouraging the reporting of errors, ensuring no retalliation for reporting of errors, developing a culture in which communication flows freely regardless of authority, and implementation of mechanisms of feedback and learning from errors (The Institute of Medicine, p. 178, 2000). Continuing education is an imperative to creating a safe environment for the patient. Although this seems like a novel concept, only introduced in the last few decades, its importance was recognized more than 150 years ago. To quote Florence Nightingale, the mother of modern nursing, “Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backwards” (Lannon, p. 17,