Patient Safety Needs

Teamwork and collaboration with other healthcare providers is very important. To function effectively there needs to be mutual respect, open communication, and shared decision making in the best interest of the patient. As a member of a team it is vital to know ones own strengths and limitations, this way patients receive the best care.

Ms. Mancinho continues to strive for excellence and patient care improvements in her position as staff nurse in the hemodialysis unit. She is currently the primary nurse for five of our chronic dialysis patients. All of her primary patients exceed recommended adequacy guidelines and maintain patent, infection free arterial venous fistulas/grafts. While participating in monthly interdisciplinary care plan meetings, she makes suggestions that have led to positive outcomes such as: changes in dry weights, reviews of patients medications with the nephrologist to facilitate warranted medication adjustments as needed, referrals/close coordination with other disciplines such as podiatry and wound care to prevent infection/amputation in patients with advanced vascular disease, and endocrinology for educational purposes for well controlled blood sugars. She is able to quickly assess subtle changes in her patients to then notify the charge nurse and physician for appropriate guidance in facilitating positive patient care outcomes. Through her acute assessment skills she prevented an access from clotting. Prevention of clotting leads to extended longevity of the access. She applies the nursing process to systems or processes at the team/unit/work group level to improve Veteran care. She worked with flow in the new unit which led to better patient care and staff satisfaction. She developed the time out policy: a requirement for

During the transitioning process to the new hemodialysis unit, Ms. Conlon anticipated the challenges acquired by learning to set up and use new water equipment in an acute situation. In response to this, Ms. Conlon created and implemented a reverse osmosis flow sheet to assist her colleagues with the quick set-up of the portable RO in the ICU care setting. This tool resulted in a smoother transition for her colleagues, improvement in the delivery of care to the acute dialysis patient, and a decrease in the possibility of staffing overtime.

Ms. Cetiner has been an RN in the hemodialysis unit for the past 6 years. She provides excellent care to our Veterans, and consistently functions in a professional manner with staff, patients and families. She was part of a unit I CARE award presented by Dr. Mayo-Smith for quality and commitment to our Veterans. She demonstrates competency in the utilization of the nursing process as evidenced by the accurate assessment, plan, implementation, and evaluation of patient care in her daily practice. She developed a unit diabetic foot

“All health care disciplines share a common and primary commitment to serving the patient and working toward the ideal of health for all.” (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2014, p. 1) There are many different professional members in the healthcare system. Each of them, have a specific specialty and responsibility to the patient and play an important role in the patient’s overall plan of care. “The scope of health care mandates that health professionals work collaboratively and with other related disciplines. Collaboration emanates from an understanding and appreciation of the roles and contributions that each discipline brings to the care delivery experience.” (American Association of Colleges of

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 National Patient Safety Goal NPSG 0.7.06.01 entitled “ Use proven guidelines to prevent infection of the urinary tract that are caused by catheter.” was selected (The Joint Commission, 2015). Gould et al. (2010) reported that in an acute care hospital, a urinary catheter is the most commonly used medical devices (as cited in Acker, 2014). What is a urinary catheter? Urinary catheter is a thin tube inserted into the bladder to drain urine. A collection system bag is connected to the catheter (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Gokula et al. (2014) asserted, short-term and long-term

My community assessment project focused on adults with chronic renal disease who are receiving peritoneal dialysis under the care of the Davita Dialysis Clinic located in Dothan, Alabama. This modality of artificial kidney replacement minimizes the disruption of the user’s daily life by allowing them to remove waste products from their bodies on daily basis during their ordinary sleeping hours. According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was estimated that as many as 10% of adults or more than 20 million people in the United States may be suffering from chronic kidney disease and in 2011 alone, 113,136 of these individuals began treatment for their end stage renal disease ("National chronic kidney disease fact sheet,

As a dialysis nurse I am tasked with providing pre and post treatment assessments for each patient and through these assessments I identify if there are any patient problems that must be managed. These problems can include access issues, such as clotting or infection, fluid related problems and many others. If a patient is short of breath or complains of chest pain prior to

Describe complications that can occur as a result of dialysis and identify nursing measures that are designed to prevent these complications.

Nursing has special commitments and expectations unlike any career. Nurses spend the most time with a patient amongst a team of care providers. Nurses play a major role in patient safety and care experience. Nurses need skills to evaluate a plan of care before administering medication. Communication is key in providing information and support to the patient along with their loved ones.

Teams working in a hospital or other healthcare setting may consist of several physicians, nurses, medical assistants, referral coordinators, pharmacists, therapists, and students among others. Such large teams can provide comprehensive care for complex and chronic illnesses, but when they fail to work well together, they

A failure of team members to work well together leads to poor patient care since good team-working improves patient safety (Salas, Burke & Stagl, 2004, cited in Amalberti, Auroy, Berwick & Barach, 2005). Leonard, Graham & Bonacum

Patient’s safety has been very fundamental aspect of the nursing care. Nurses have to follow the law and ethics before we do anything. Looking at the circumstances, we should be able to identify the priorities of individual patients. Over years and years, nurses and doctors have done the best to treat the patient’s right. Be mindful of what they are doing. That’s when patient’s safety is compromised. Some of the reasons are clear from the case study such as lack of communication, lack of judgment, nurses not being able to identify when to call for MET call, not observing the vital signs, poor documentation. There are numbers of death is related with avoidable medical error just as this case study. The other consequences due to medical errors are disability, health care cost, financial consequences (A. Sharpe 2003).

Berwick (1999) notes that a patient safety issue of some concern is medication errors, something that at the time of his writing affected 7 out of every 100 patients. Such errors need not happen, and certainly not to that degree, but there are many issues within health care that allow for such mistakes to occur and put patient safety at risk. In a later article, Berwick (2005) argues for a more business-oriented approach to health care, using TQM principles and other techniques borrowed from business schools. In response to that article, it was noted that health care is inherently different from other businesses, both in terms of the nature of patient care itself, and in the degree of government intervention in the industry (Berwick, 2005, b).