Patient Safety Essay

Over time the health care industry has become more complex. Health care is rapidly evolving and continuing to complicate our delivery of care, which in turn has the same effect on quality of care. This steady evolution and change results in nursing shortages and an increase in the prevalence of errors being made. In hopes of preventing these errors and creating safe and high quality patient care, with the focus on new and improved ways of thinking, The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) initiative was developed. The QSEN focuses on the following competencies: patient-centered care, quality improvement, safety, and teamwork and collaboration. Their initiatives work to prepare and develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are necessary to make improvements in the quality and safety of health care systems (Qsen.org, 2014).

The main ethical issues that presented in the case scenario is maintaining privacy and confidentiality. “Privacy is limited access to a person, the person’s body, conversations, bodily functions or objects immediately associated with the person” (CNO, 2009, p. 7). Nurses recognize the importance

Nursing and healthcare continue to change on a daily basis. The one thing that has remained constant during these changes is maintaining the safety of our patients. By maintaining their safety, nurses must ensure that they are keeping up-to-date with the changes in technology now being introduced in healthcare, new and emerging diseases, new equipment, and changes in treatment modalities. One such responsibility is ensuring that nurses do not operate equipment they were not oriented to or trained to use in an effort to prevent injury patients. Nurses and other healthcare professionals are being held accountable for practicing within their scope of practice based on their licensure regulations, and the company policies and procedures. Therefore, nurses are responsible for their professional growth and practice by ensuring that they comply with the necessary standards required by their profession.

This can include cases of perceived “pain-seeking” patients or “frequent flyers”. It can be difficult to treat those we see as trying to “use the system” for pure personal gain equally to those we may see as “truly ill”. It is important to remember to treat everyone in the same manner. Another important provision is provision 3. This provision states, “The nurse promotes, advocates for, and strives to protect the health, safety, and rights of the patient.” This means that nurses must always do everything thinking of the patient’s best interest first. This includes making sure they are fully informed before signing any consents for procedures and questioning any orders that may seem inappropriate for said patient. It is the nurse’s job to be the patient’s advocate and to always provide a safe environment for the patient.

As health care workers we are under a legal obligation to protect an individual from any kind of abuse, whether it is physical, financial, emotional, sexual or psychological .Legislation, policies and procedures exist to promote a safer working environment and reduce the potential for risks occurring. They are tailored for the needs of each setting, known and understood by employers and employees and reviewed on a regular basis.

Nursing profession is constantly changing with the development of new technologies that lead to a new level of responsibility. The new level of responsibility challenges nurses torespond to different and difficultsituations in the health care industry, especially in protecting the human right, dignity of patients and their safety. Nurses hold adistinctive position as patient advocates, regardless of their respective areas of practice; either in a home health, clinic, or in a hospital setting. Nursesare faced with ethical decisions, both personal and professional decisions.

According to American Nurses Association (ANA), (2010) “the nurse promotes, advocates for and strives to protect the heath, safety and right of the patient” (p. 6). Nursing responsibilities should be acted at the highest standard and must be based on legal and ethical obligations.

According to the ANA (American Nurses Association), it is the duty of nurse to protect the patient’s rights, safety, health and advocate for the patient. By treating the patient in an open area, invades their privacy, can cause embarrassment and most of all jeopardize trust between the patient and care giver. This negligent care could also lead to legal ramifications in the future against the hospital. By breaking this trust, the patient may also omit valuable information that could affect their treatment ultimately causing them harm. Some patients may become noncompliant with their prescribed treatment. It is essential that effective communication between patient and care provider occurs at all times. . Healthcare providers are obligated to give safe and effective care.

Board of Nurse Examiners case due to the correlation and importance of promoting patient safety regardless of facility policy or physician’s orders (TBON, 2013b). The focus and emphasis of a nurse’s obligation is to devote their skills and expertise to promote patient safety and abiding by the Nursing Practice Act. The standing element to consider in this case is the unclear lines of when a nurse’s duty officially kicks in for a patient (TBON, 2013b). Following this case it has been further clarified that a nurse is to apply their knowledge, skills and abilities in providing safe and effective care to their patients regardless of any standing organizational policies or orders given by physicians (TBON,

Nurses should be aware that their negligence causes very bad effects on patients and should be anxious about medical malpractice because nurses are held answerable for their own negligence and could find themselves being charged for malpractice. (Elis, 2012).

As a radiographer patient safety is an essential part of the scope of practice that cannot be taken lightly. This essay will look at a scenario where patient safety is compromised and the effect this can have on a career. The implications on the radiographer’s career will be discussed in alliance with the Radiographers scope of practice and Medical Law.

Patient autonomy, patient safety and risk are the main key issues which have arose from the scenario of Ward 6 regarding patient, Mrs Green. These issues have been chosen to be addressed as it is important that the patients in your care have the choice and are always safe and not at risk, to do this The Institute of Medicine (2010) says nurses and other health professionals should work together to ensure a safe delivery of quality care (cited in Kim et al. 2015 p.2491).

Issues related to a lack of patient safety have been going on for a lot of years now. Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, there has been a national emphasis on cultivating patient safety. Patient safety is a global issue, that touches countries at all levels of expansion and is one of the nation's most determined health care tests. According to the Institute of Medicine (1999), they have measured that as many as 48,000 to 88,000 people are dying in U.S. hospitals each year as the result of lapses in patient safety. Estimates of the size of the problem on this are scarce particularly in developing countries; it is likely that millions of patients worldwide could suffer disabling injuries or death every year due to unsafe medical care. Risk and safety have always been uninterruptedly been significant concerns in the hospital industry. Patient safety is a very much important part of our health care system and it really

Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency

In addition, “As mandatory reporters, nurses have an additional duty to immediately report any unsafe patient care to the appropriate supervisor or manager. This duty includes identifying and reporting staffing problems, protecting the health, safety and rights of the patients, preserving the nurse's own integrity and safety, refusing a patient care assignment based on concerns for patient safety, and practicing with reasonable skill and safety.” (Nurse Together, 2016, Nurse’s Duty and Accountability section, para.1) (C. #83)