A Research Proposal For Nurses On A Trauma Unit After Implementation Of New Electronic Method Of Charting And Administration

In a survey carried out by the Nursing times, it was said that two thirds of Nurses believed that shortage of equipment compromises patient safety (Ford, 2010).

In the article “What Do Nurses Really Do?”, Suzanne Gordon explores what nurses truly do. She concludes that nurses “save lives, prevent complications, prevent suffering, and save money” (Gordon 2006). Nurses provide care for their patients in the physical and emotional sense. Emotionally caring for a patient and being sensitive to his or her needs result from interacting with patients while performing the skills and using the knowledge that nurses learned in school. Nurses grow in their skills, knowledge, and attitudes through practice. Quality and safety education for nursing incorporates competencies that all nurses must use in their practice. These nursing competencies include evidence-based nursing practice, quality improvement, safety, teamwork and collaboration, patient-centered care, and informatics.

Prioritizing is also necessary tool for effective time management. Nurses have to prioritize tasks on their route and finish tasks from high to low priority order (Waterworth, 2003). In addition, nurses should be careful of some priority setting traps. The first trap is "whatever hits first" which means a nurse responds to tasks that happen first instead of thinking twice and then responding. The second trap is the "squeaky wheel", a patient who is able to gather the most attention from a nurse to hear his or her urgent request may not be the

If nurses are sleepy, and burnout, they might tend to find a shortcut of giving care to the patient. These kind of shortcut can create medication errors, poor quality of care given, and can cause death.

This reading discusses the use of wireless alerts pagers in a Surgical Intensive Care Unit and how it affects both work practices and information flows through a qualitative study. From the research that exists, we can see that pagers are successful communication tools because of the mobility and immediacy they provide. Interviews were completed with physicians and pharmacist who used the pagers and nurses who did not use the pager about how it impacted their work. In addition to collecting data this way, the researchers also compiled observational data from watching the device be used in regular practice. The study noted that

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Habersham County, Tom was feeling slightly nervous as he exited the staff lounge and entered the hustle and bustle of County Hospital’s ER to begin his first shift as an RN. The first few hours of his shift passed slowly as Tom mostly checked vital signs and listened to patients complain about various aches, pains, coughs, and sniffles. He realized that the attending physician, Dr. Greene, who was rather “old school” in general about how he interacted with nursing staff, wanted to start him out slowly. Tom knew, though, that the paramedics could bring in a trauma patient at any time.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how safety in the nursing profession affects the nursing education, nursing practice, and nursing research. Safety in the nursing profession means to minimize the risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performances (QSEN, 2014). Patient safety is a very important aspect in the profession of nursing. It is the nurse’s job to keep up to date with their patients and to make sure that protocol is being followed at all times. To maintain this strategy, the nurse must show proper knowledge of a nurse, skills of a nurse, and also a professional attitude.

Nursing is a critical thinking field. Being a nursing can be challenging and time consuming. A workaround is a system used to bypass a task (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). Workarounds allows nurses to create logical and time efficient short cuts. While using the “short cut” method nurses still have to provide clinical decision making choices, quality care, and safety.

The target audience at this time is business and other health care professionals as the need to have nurses recognized as assets to the fast moving execution of electronic systems in health care, soon to replace paper, is urgent. If more nurses are not involved in this process as expert consultants, there is a high risk of failure and inevitably patient safety. I will not directly target the public but indirectly as I believe once health care and business professionals view nurses as experts in our profession overall, then their perceptions and opinions will reach the public. The obstacle will be persuading those with little health care understanding just how nursing can be affective. Business leaders are all about deliverables, making sure they are provided. How the product is packaged is not of great concern; patient safety is not a term truly understood by non-clinical analysts and project managers. Within eHealth in general, the organizational structure from top down holds minimal if any clinical knowledge beyond the high level business of healthcare.

Two types of data were collected through surveys, both before and after implementation of the combined approach (Sand-Jecklin and Sherman,2014). The first data was on nurses’ point of view with regards reporting process, and the second on patients view regrading nursing care. The baseline survey included 233 patients and 148 nurses, while the survey three months into the implementation period included 157 patients and 98 nurses. The final survey, 13 months into the impanation, was completed by 154 patients and 54 nurses. The patient survey also included responses from patient families. These were 70, 72, and 53 responses for baseline survey, three-month postimplementation surveys, and 13-month postimplementation surveys.

Implementing change can evoke stress, and nurses are not immune to this stress brought on by change, or this stress might be amplified due to the fact that nurses are usually at the forefront of change. Any change that is initiated in the healthcare industry will impact how nurse perform their duty, and can negatively can affect their workflow if extra precaution is not taken. Thus, nurses are a major force in resistance to

Errors pervade in our lives whether it is our home, in our workplace, or in our society. The effects of healthcare errors have impacted all our lives either directly or indirectly. Patient safety and quality care are at the core of healthcare system which strongly depends upon nurses. “To achieve goals in patient safety and quality, thereby improve healthcare, nurses must assume the leadership role. Nurses need to ensure that they and other healthcare providers center healthcare on patients and their families. Even though the quality and safety of healthcare is heavily influenced by the complex nature

Secondly, there is the issue with nurses not following protocol. Procedures are in place for a reason, to insure the safety of the patient. Agyemang writes, “…many errors occur as a result of nurses not following policies and procedures…” (British Journal of Nursing, 382.) Some nurses violate procedures such as, “…double checking medicines prepared by co-workers, reduction of responsibility (both nurses expecting the other person to have checked it more thoroughly), auto-processing (one nurse reciting the medication details or calculations to the second checker, without the second checker actually confirming this before signing) and lack of time.” (British Journal of Nursing, 382.) If protocol had been followed, then majority of the common errors would be avoided. Instead, nurses are over stressed and in a sort of “routine” that inhibits

By focusing on overall patient care and satisfaction many areas patients are surveyed on can be improved. Once a performance standard is selected staff must develop a plan for improvement. The first step would be to research as many sources as possible to find the best evidence based practices that would work for the specific facility. This can be divided into two the two categories of direct nursing care and indirect nursing care. Direct nursing care would include implementing hourly rounding, adequate nursing staff and SBAR communication. Indirect nursing care includes availability of technology such as wireless communication, real time locating, wireless monitoring, and electronic medical records. The second step would contain education of the staff on what is to be implemented and why. The why is important for nurses to overcome any barriers that might be encountered. While nursing practice has grown based on evidence Vanhook (2009) explains the greatest barriers to evidence based practice, such as difficulty interpreting findings, limited time, and misunderstanding of research itself, and how to overcome these barriers. With phase one and two completed facilities can move forward with implementation and evaluation.

Urgency of acute care varies depending on the situation but can range to anything from emergency surgeries, to injuries, chronic illnesses, and also for the recovery of those procedures. Majority of the patients in acute care settings are critically ill. Nursing responsibilities in acute care settings are vital to patient’s recovery due to the front line position nurses play as well as the wide variety of tasks carried out. Assessments are made during every encounter the nurse has with the patient along with monitoring the patient’s progress. Nurses are responsible for recognizing symptoms the patient may be experiencing due to illness or injury and whether they fall in the spectrum of normal reactions. Vital signs are measured routinely and can be indicators of the patient’s current status. When vitals are questioned diagnostic tests can be arranged to further assess possible comorbidities the patient may have. Care plans are made to plan interventions the health care team can take to help patients through challenges they face, both physical and mental. Nurses administer medications as well as first aid as needed. They are responsible for maintaining special equipment patients may require including monitors and ventilators are well.