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
Willock et al, (2007) developed a detailed questionnaire based on a paediatric and adult pressure ulcer literature. A survey of 265 in patients in a paediatric hospital in the UK was conducted so detailed data could be obtained. The study found anaemia emerged as being a highly significant aspect of determining pressure ulcers. As a result of this study, the Glamorgan scale was
Sayar S.,Turgut, S., Dogan, H., Ekici, A., Yurtsever, S., Dermirkan, F., Doruk, N., Tsdelen, B. (2009) Incidence of pressure ulcers in intensive care unit patients at risk according to the Waterlow scale and factors influencing the development of pressure ulcers. Journal of Clinical Nursing 18, 765-774.
Utilizing this tool will allow The Restorative Nurse and Wound Nurse to generate a graph based off of the data retrieved from the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) quarterly Quality Measures Report (APPENDIX B). The Wound Nurse and Restorative Nurse will start with the last data reported before the start of the On-Time Project and then graph the data every three months during the On-Time Project for the following areas: falls, weight loss, in- house acquired pressure injuries and nosocomial infection. For that purpose, to monitor the effectiveness of the On- Time Project the Wound Nurse and Restorative Nurse will provide a designated share drive to present to the Director of Nursing and other stakeholders on a quarterly schedule at the quarterly Quality Assurance Improvement Program(QAIP)
The reduction of pressure ulcer prevalence rates is a national healthcare goal (Lahmann, Halfens, & Dassen, 2010). Pressure ulcer development causes increased costs to the medical facility and delayed healing in the affected patients (Thomas, 2001). Standards and guidelines developed for pressure ulcer prevention are not always followed by nursing staff. For example, nurses are expected to complete a full assessment on new patients within 24 hours at most acute-care hospitals and nursing homes (Lahmann et al., 2010). A recent study on the causes of pressure ulcer de...
Q.3 Nurses as part of regulated health care practitioners are responsible and accountable to abide by the standards, codes and guidelines of nursing practice (NMBA, 2016). The nurse in the case study has breached the standard 1.4 of the Registered Nurse Standards for Practice. According to standard 1.4, the registered nurse should comply with "legislation, regulation, policies, guidelines and other standards or requirements relevant to the context of practice” when making decisions because this will be the foundation of the nurse in delivering high quality services (NMBA, 2016). The nurse in the scenario did not follow the hospital policy concerning “Between the Flags” or “red zone” and a doctor should be notified of this condition. Furthermore, the nurse failed to effectively respond to a deteriorating patient.
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.
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,
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
It is right of a patient to be safe at health care organization. Patient comes to the hospital for the treatment not to get another disease. Patient safety is the most important issue for health care organizations. Patient safety events cost of thousands of deaths and millions of dollars an-nually. Even though the awareness of patient safety is spreading worldwide but still we have to accomplish many things to achieve safe environment for patients in the hospitals. Proper admin-istrative changes are required to keep health care organization safe. We need organizational changes, effective leadership, strong health care policies and effective health care laws to make patients safer.
The nursing code of ethics has a very standard definition. It is the base on how nurses should guide themselves in conduct by making the right decision regarding ethical issues. According to the National Student Nurses Association “students of nursing have a responsibility to society in learning the academic theory and clinical skills needed to provide nursing care” (2003). In the clinical setting nurses have a lot of responsibilities while caring for an ill patient, they have the obligation to practice their profession with compassion, love, and respect the uniqueness of each patient, as nurses we are not supposed to deny care to a patient because of their economic status, their skin color, race, or the nature of health problems, we are here to help the people in need in particular those of susceptible populations. The NSNA states that the code of conduct is based on an understanding that to practice nursing as a student is an agreement that trust and honesty is depended on us by society. The announcement of the code provided direction for the nursing student in the personal development of an ethical foundation and not limited to the academic or clinical environment but can assist in the holistic development of a person. (National Student Nurses Association, 2003)
Several healthcare providers advocate patient safety as one of the highest priorities during the provision of care to patients. Medical errors exist and they can pose a real threat to the quality and sustainability of a hospital while providing patient care. There are many things that can occur in the healthcare field; but no one is exempt from making a mistake that could possibly lead to a personal tragedy. According to a
The Hippocratic Oath is one of the first written statements of a moral code for physicians and it shows their commitment for the good of their patients. The safety of the patient is the cornerstone to deliver quality in healthcare. Consequently putting patient safety first is at the heart of Clinical Risk Management. In order to improve the quality and safety of health-care services, it is fundamental to identify the circumstances and opportunities that put patients at risk of harm and act to prevent or control those risks. The risks to patients are many and diverse, and the complexity of the healthcare system that delivers them is huge. It is often believed that safety lies foremost in the hands of those who are the closest to the patient,
This new era of year it is necessary for most nurses to undertake a literature review at one point in their study time. It is a complex process of skills, such as learning how to find the research topics and gaining skills of literature searching and developing ability to study and blending the data. The first step in literature search is to find a review topic. I found my topic, as I was interested in studying pain management of patient with pressure ulcers. I refined my search in to more specific so that the final information will be manageable. Selecting key terms is critical for achieving successful results when searching for evidence. A good place to begin identifying key terms is the PICOT question (smidt-114). In electronic data base
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
INTRODUCTION In order to achieve a high quality of healthcare delivery, the standard of care must be viewed in various perspectives. Apart from acknowledging patient’s perception of the healthcare delivery standard, it is also important to understand how patient safety is cultivated in an organization. Research showed that, the safety and efficient care require all these elements to be well integrated and coordinated (1). As we can see nowadays, the elements of Patient Safety Culture (PSC) have been an important dimension in any of the quality assessments for a healthcare organization in order to achieve awards and recognitions by the accreditation bodies, be it locally or internationally (2).The concept of PSC sparkled substantially upon