Professional Practice Of Nursing Safety Culture

Healthcare is a dynamic, ever-changing environment. The complex circumstances around daily conversations that encompass life-threatening decisions are critical. In order to deliver high quality care, individuals must be able to communicate effectively. In the perfect world of communication, everyone receives the exact same information and is able to respond the exact same way. Unfortunately, communication breakdown is a prevalent issue among hospitals. On any given day of the hospital arena, multiple interactions take place. Some of the dialogue is planned, and some is not. While hospital departments are living in different silos within the same organization, the cultures may vary among the employees. Hospital leadership fosters

Practicing cultural safety requires nurses to have undertaken personal reflection of their own cultural identity. This enables them to recognise the impact that their personal culture has on their professional practice (Cox & Taua, 2013). This personal reflection should allow the nurse to provide effective care to an individual or family from a different culture (Cox & Taua, 2013). In this essay I will reflect upon two of my own cultural groupings, discuss the concept of “other”, the relevance of cultural safety to nursing practice and how I might care for someone who is culturally different from myself.

Given the complexity of healthcare system today, effective and efficient collaboration and communication among team members is critical to ensure patient safety. Daniel & Rosentein (2008) reported that during a typical patient’s hospital stay, a patient may interact with 50 different employees that may include doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, etc. They also reported that when healthcare professional are not communicating and collaborating effectively, patient safety is at risk for several reasons: break in communication flow, misinterpretation of information, incorrect telephone orders and overlooked orders.

“Errors in communication give rise to substantial clinical morbidity and mortality (Riesenberg, Leitzsch, & Cunningham, 2010).” As a result, the Joint Commission has identified effective communication as one of its National Patient Safety Goals (Dunsford, 2009).

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.

In the article, "Improving Patient Safety by Standardizing Handoff Communications" (Danis, 2007), the purpose of the study was to implement a standardized approach to handoff communication and to improve compliance in using a handoff communication form. The study was based on the lack of standardized communication as the root cause of issues surrounding how patients receive care and safety and addressed the JACHO 2006 National Patient Safety Goals requiring a standardized approach in handoff communications. The study found that implementing a handoff communication form increased communications about patients between staff of each department. It concluded that staffs were more aware of communication gaps and the difficulties in communicating in the complex health care environment. This study is important for bringing more awareness and solutions to the problem of interdepartmental communications to ensure that patients will continue to

Every day in the health care field, professional have to choose the most effective communication method when communicating to other professionals, patients, patient families, and the general public. Different circumstances have very specific methods of communication that need to be utilized for communication to be effective. Furthermore, in the health care field the regulations of HIPAA have to be considered to ensure that certain information is being protected as well as identity of people pertaining to the health scenarios. Further will be discussed the methods of communicating in the health care field, the advantages

The American Nurses Association (ANA) “Code of Ethics for Nurses” (ANA, 2001) states: “The nurse promotes, advocates for, and strives to protect the health, safety, and rights of the patient”. This reflects that advocating for the patient directly correlates with the safety and well-being of the patient. The key part to patient advocacy is effective communication. In recent times, there has been a focus on the connection of effective communication between healthcare workers and patient safety. A number of Institute of Medicine reports has brought focus to the severe matter. The reports have emphasized the concern of the lack of communication in the healthcare setting and the resulting negative patient outcomes. (Hanks, 2012a). This goes back to the notion that while many healthcare professionals consider themselves as a working member of a team, we have the natural tendency to work autonomously. Therefore, it is the nurse’s duty to collaborate patient centered care by practicing good communication skills with the entire healthcare team, the patient, and the patient’s family if consent is given to assure patient safety.

On many occasions, I have seen situations in which effective communication involving the professional healthcare team played a vital role in the positive outcome of patient care. On the other hand, there have been miscommunication between the healthcare team resulting in situations that could have been tragic to the patient.

Risk management and legal concerns play a major role in how nurses interact with their patients and go about their day to day work tasks. Patient safety has become one of the primary focuses in healthcare organizations around the world. “As a result of seminal reports such as To Err is Human, The Quality in Australian Healthcare Study and An Organization with a Memory, the international healthcare management agenda is currently concerned with reducing the risks to which patients are exposed in care settings” (Kirwan & Matthews, 2012).

I believe that communication is the main reason problems occur in health care. It is crucial that the health care team works together as a team and communicates any issues or concerns throughout the process of patient care. No matter how many processes are put into place or how many checklists are followed, mistakes are going to be made unless proper communication occurs. Unfortunately, these mistakes are usually at the cost of safe patient care. According to Edwards (2008), “every

Casarett, D., Spence, C., Clark, M. A., Shield, R., & Teno, J. M. (2012). Defining patient

Communication plays a vital role in the healthcare setting, as the relationship with the healthcare professional sets the tone of the care experience and has a powerful impact on patient satisfaction. It is “the shared process in which messages are sent and received between two or more people which are made up of a sender, receiver, and message in a particular context” (cite, date). This essay highlights the importance of, and some common barriers to, effective communication in the healthcare setting. It involves many interpersonal skills such as effective observation, questioning and listening, giving feedback, recognizing and removing barriers.

Communication is the leading factor in heath care errors (book). (Treas & Wilkinson Book p463) defines communication as “a dynamic, reciprocal process of sending and receiving messages. The messages may be verbal, non-verbal,

In the article “A culture of patient safety in nursing homes” by Castle N.G and Sonon K.E the patient safety defined and highlighted as “the prevention of harm caused by errors” by several health related organizations. The most common errors are patient falls, medication errors, resident or patient identification, care giver miscommunication and healthcare‐associated infections. Nursing homes should be addressing the patient safety more than the other health organizations due to the state of their residents. The authors are adapting a research to evaluating the patient safety culture at nursing homes in United States. The assessment was done by sending questioning survey form to several nursing homes in the area. The collection of returning