Nurses are an important workforce in the medical field, from primary patient care to complex procedures like surgical operations, their input is quite significant. Just like all the other professions, nurses face several difficulties in their day to day practice. It is quite ironical how nurses sometimes manage to effectively take care of patients but fail to take care of themselves in the process. In their daily operations, nurses are exposed to numerous hazards that would sometimes prove fatal to them. It is important to take extra care when handling patients and other equipment to avoid self-injury. The needle stick and safety prevention act was passed by congress in 2000 to ensure safer equipment for all medical professionals. According
Nurses’ are to ensure patient safety in all aspects of care provided. Sometimes, this is found outside of what is considered “actual” care, such as a physical assessments and administration of medications. Every day nurses’ are given assignments to follow, which includes which patients to take care of. What happens when this assignment is unsafe for all involved? Administrative Codes have been established by each state Board of Nursing to guide nurses’ in different situations. Safe Harbor Peer Review assists nurses to know how to handle an unsafe assignment.
Maintaining a secure surrounding is a reflection of the organizational culture and an indicator of the level of compassion and vigilance that the organization has for the workers and the welfare of the patients. The management needs to improve safety and assess the causes of error during the handling of patients. As a matter of fact, the stakeholders and the policymakers need to intense their efforts to establish and structure conditions and process that will promote healthy working conditions and improve the patient safety. Health care staff need to be trained in the proper skills of handling patients with terminal and highly infectious diseases. The workers and the management should ensure that the workers are provided with the relevant protective gears while handling a patient. The cases of nonlethal activity injuries are the main reasons for sickness among the staff. Purchase and use of patient transfer and lifting facilities are the key elements of an efficient program to manage the danger of injury to patients and employees related to lifting, moving, locating or movement of patients. It will also show the level of management commitment to implement a secure patient handling program and to supply the health workers with applicable measures to avoid manual handling. The education and coaching of aid staff ought to be in gear towards assessment of hazards within the assistance work setting, choice and use of the acceptable patient lifting instrumentation and devices, and review of research-based practices of safe patient
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.
Compared to other members of the community of health care nurses are at a significant risk of needle stick injury because of their frequent performance with vein punctures and taking care of patients suffering from different infectious diseases. Needles may cause injury to you or to someone else if they were not properly discarded after use and can also cause an injury if you do not use gloves to protect your hands while you work with needles. If a medical professional gets stuck by a needle, then they need to wash the area thoroughly with soap and contact their healthcare provider as soon as
healthcare organization accrediting bodies, and to maintain credibility with patients and peers alike, must adhere to the National Patient Safety Goals. As stated by Ulrich and Kear (2014), "Not only are nurses responsible for providing safe patient care, we are also responsible for creating an environment in which others can provide safe patient care, and for being the last line of defense when needed between the patient and potential harm. Having a deep understanding of patient safety and patient safety culture allows nurses to be the leaders we need to be in ensuring that our patients are always
Safety is the most important factor for patients receiving care within healthcare organizations. Health care workers and team members most especially nurses play an important role in the protection of the patients ensuring prevention of falls and injuries that occur as a result from falls. Falls are known to be the second leading cause of death from unintentional injuries worldwide (Mitchell, 2017). Nurses have the onus to keep their patients safe from falls and associated injuries daily. Patients that have been hospitalized are at higher risk of falls. Nurses have various tasks to be done per shift and it is important to ensure time is made available to meet
This article discusses such preventative measures such as visual cues that show a patients risk for falling. Having the fall risk of the patient posted using a sign, and using yellow wristbands that read fall risk to alert personnel to a patients risks for falls. One area this article talks about is the benefit of patients participating in a nurse led preoperative education session that reviewed risk factors for falls. These preoperative classes cover such things as calling for help before getting out of bed. These preoperative classes also talked about preventing postoperative falls. This
I used to work on medical field as a nursing assistant several years ago. The hospital is very strict, and organized when it comes to patients’ safety. Every morning, there is a briefing for fifteen minutes, and all staff should attend. During the meeting, the charge nurse talk about patients’ safety, the census, how busy is going to be that day, what need to be done, and the patient who need more attention due to fall risk. Hand washing is very important. All staff must wash their hands before and after entering the patients’ room. There are hand sanitizer all over the place, everyone must use it to avoid cross contamination. All patients’ bed must be in lower position, with floor mattress on both side of the bod in case the patient fall.
Nurses are undoubtedly one of the most trusted professionals worldwide. Patients, family members, and doctors entrust nurses to provide the utmost quality care to sick individuals. Top priorities of all nurses are advocacy for their patients: including advocating for their physical health, holistic welfare, and utmost importantly, their safety. Patient safety will always be the top priority when providing patient care. The nurse’s responsibility during every patient encounter is to ensure that each patient under her care, receives no harm. As a direct result of the previous statement, it is crucial that every nurse knows their rights to refuse unsafe patient assignments, the process to refuse unsafe patient assignments, and the legal or ethical ramifications that could present themselves if proper judgement is not used. By understanding these rules, nurses not only achieve the responsibility of advocating for patient safety but also safeguard their careers and license.
"Effects Of A National Safe Patient Handling Program On Nursing Injury Incidence Rates." JONA: The Journal Of Nursing Administration, vol 44, no. 10, 2014, pp. 525-534. Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health),
According to CDC in 2011 statistics stated that “annually about 385,000 sharp related injuries happen in hospitals. Shapiro related injuries actually happened more in the past (before the needlestick safety and prevent act in 2000) after the needlestick act sharp related injuries went down by 31.6 % from
Mandating safe staffing levels for registered nurses in acute care settings has been an important topic of discussion for many years. As the demand for registered nurses continues to rise, so does the clinical demands on the nurses currently working. If there are no specific policies in place that mandate safe and appropriate nurse-to-patient ratios for all acute care facilities, registered nurses (RNs) may be required to take on even more patients than the already high numbers currently given to many of them. Inadequate RN staffing has the potential to cause increases in adverse patient events (American Nurses Association (ANA), The registered nurse safe staffing act, 2015) as well as an increase in nurse injury (Musick, Trotto, & Morrison,
New approaches need to be available since there is an upward correlation between time and knowledge from advances in technology. A wide range of actions such as refining nursing training, further educating nurses about environment safety and how to manage risk situations such as ‘infection control, safe use of medicines, equipment safety, safe clinical practice and safe environment of care’ (WHO 2010; WHPA 2002), need to be addressed so that gradual improvements and altercations can be made relating to the patients’ safety (Vaismoradi ;
Healthcare providers receive education and training in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of the importance of adhering to evidence-based infection control guidelines. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 150,000 patients have been impacted by healthcare providers who have utilized unsafe injection practices since 2001. Failure to follow standards of proper infection control often encompasses healthcare providers who reuse needles, syringes, or single-dose medication vials; all of which are intended to be used for only one patient and only one procedure. Each time that a clinical professional commits a safety breach, the result can be irreversible and cause severe harm with patients being exposed to blood borne viral illnesses such as hepatitis and HIV and bacterial infections which include MRSA. The CDC’s guidelines for safe injection practices are representative of very basic infection control measures. However, the CDC is called upon routinely to identify and investigate outbreaks associated with erroneous healthcare practices. During the period from 2001 through 2011, the CDC documented over 18 outbreaks of viral hepatitis which were directly attributed to unsafe injection practices
Some staff would have been certified health worker with 10-15 years’ experience but could have forget the minor measures that must be taken to handle a needlestick, so offering them with extra training and education could refresh their memories. The World Health Organization (WHO) has always been supporting South Africa regarding their healthcare system, especially monitoring the country’s health situation and finding immediate solution to eliminate the problems. The World Health Organization have been providing healthcare workers like doctors, nurses, researchers, epidemiologist to countries who are in need of these healthcare support. The World Health Organization should consider gathering their experienced and knowledgeable healthcare workers and allowing them to educate both the less and most experienced healthcare employees in South Africa regarding the safety of needlesticks. Overall, giving the workers extra education and training at least twice a year could help needlestick injury rate to be reduced in South