Improving Patient Safety During Direct Care Delivery

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Nurses play a critical role in ensuring patient safety during direct care delivery. They interact with physicians, pharmacists, families, and other healthcare team members at the bedside consistently. Nurses are essential in promptly coordinating and updating team members on the patient's condition. To ensure high-quality care, nurses are responsible for various tasks such as monitoring patients for clinical deterioration, identifying errors and near-misses, understanding care protocols and system flaws, and recognizing and communicating changes in patient conditions. The vigilance of nurses at the bedside is crucial to patient safety. It is evident that a nurse's ability to provide safe care diminishes as the number of assigned patients increases. …show more content…

It is important to note that the relationship between nursing workload and patient safety is significant, with the nurse-to-patient ratio being just one component. Patient outcomes may also be affected by the overall workload of nurses. Due to the demanding nature of nursing work, there is a possibility of errors occurring during care provision. Regular breaks during a nurse's shift have been proven to reduce the likelihood of mistakes, especially in medication administration. The correlation between interruptions and errors highlights the direct impact of the work environment on patient safety for nurses. Although some interruptions are considered a normal part of patient care, it is important to recognize that they can contribute to errors. Additionally, longer shifts and overtime have been associated with an increased risk of mistakes, as exemplified by a well-known case where a nurse working a double shift made an error that led to criminal …show more content…

Research has shown that a higher patient-to-nurse ratio is strongly linked to instances of missed nursing care. These instances are widely acknowledged as common and widespread, primarily due to systemic factors that negatively impact both patients and nursing professionals. Failure to provide necessary care has been associated with job dissatisfaction, absenteeism, medication errors, infections, falls, pressure injuries, readmissions, and failure to rescue. The main cause of unfulfilled nursing care is the structural obstacle to managing conflicting priorities and time constraints. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure adequate staffing levels. Creating a collaborative culture within the unit and organization promotes teamwork, which in turn improves nursing job satisfaction and may reduce the burden associated with unfinished work. In 2004, the National Quality Forum established nursing-sensitive care voluntary consensus criteria. These criteria encompass patient-centered outcomes such as pressure ulcers and falls, which are considered indicators of the quality of nursing care. They also include system-related indicators such as nursing turnover, staffing ratios, ratings of the nursing practice environment, and nursing skill mix and care hours. The Magnet Hospital Recognition program, overseen by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, aims to

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