“Nursing is an art, and if it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or sculptor’s work...” (Nightingale, 1868)
In today’s health care system, “quality” and “safety” are one in the same when it comes to patient care. As Florence Nightingale described our profession long ago, it takes work and vigilance to ensure we are doing the best we can to care for our patients. (Mitchell, 2008)
The World Health Organization outlines 6 areas of quality that help shape our definition of what makes quality care. Those areas are; (1) Effective: using evidence bases practice to improve health outcomes based on needs of individuals and communities. (2) Efficient: healthcare that maximizes
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(Burhans & Alligood, 2010)
On a daily basis there is a lot of thought and focus directed at these patients to assure they are getting quality medical care; you may have caught a medication error, made multiple phone calls, waited on hold for what seems like forever, waited on doctors, ran to another floor all to get a patient something they needed or wanted, or may the nurse noticed an important change in the patients status that could dramatically affect their outcome. Most times the patient does not see or not even know about these behind the scenes battles to ensure quality care. Conversely, most often, especially when considering a patient in the hospital setting, our perception is our reality. Patients often do not know the ins and outs of procedure and protocol and rely solely on their perception of the care they are receiving. Studies have shown that patients desire to be perceived and cared for as individuals. Lying in that bed waiting on a nurse for 20 minutes for pain medication may just translate into lack of care on the nurses’ part to the patient but in reality the nurse was caught in another room with a different patient with a situation he or she couldn’t walk away from. Often nurses are stressed which can also convey a certain harshness to patients. In other cases maybe the job has become so repetitive that the nurse
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
Patients want and expect to receive high quality care. Nurses want to provide the best care possible to their patients and like everybody else; want a pleasing job environment. Hospitals, on the other hand, are expected to provide a safe environment to patients, have enough nursing staff and remain profitable (Keller, Dulle, Kwiecinski, Altimier & Owens, 2013). The ultimate goal is to improve quality of care and patient safety across the United States; therefore, all the different interests of these major stakeholders should be taken into
The actions of the preceptor demonstrated her competency for patient safety. According to the QSEN Project, nurses demonstrating the competency of safety, aim to minimize the risk of harm to the patient by effectively using their knowledge, technology and standards of practice that have been developed from the study, observation and improvement upon commonly unsafe practices. Through this, there is a development of standardized practices that support the provision of quality and safety in patient care (Cherry & Jacob, 2014, p.
This paper brings up my personal nursing philosophy I am planning to deliver in my nursing career. I believe that nursing is more than merely as a profession but also involving my medical knowledge combining it with a commitment to quality nursing care with compassion, respect, dignity, advocacy of each patient. I believe that the interdisciplinary care and collaboration in the medical field are crucial that leads to a healthy relationship among healthcare professionals in promoting quality patient care that is individualized to each patient’s needs.
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
The Institute of Medicine (IoM) defines health care quality as “the degree to which health care services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge (IoM, 2001)” The quality domains consists of effectiveness, efficiency, equity, patient centeredness, safety and timeliness, in order to provide effective and efficient health care to patients the quality domains must be met.
As we all know, patient safety in a healthcare setting is extremely important and is to be taken very seriously. This is a very challenging topic with any healthcare establishment, because people do make errors and it’s only human. It is everybody’s job within the facility, hospital, or any healthcare setting to work on making sure that the safety of every patient that enters and leaves their building is safe. We want patients to feel safe and confident when they have to go to the hospital for a procedure, or even to a skilled nursing facility to have rehabilitation or to eventually stay long term.
Patient Safety in Professional Nursing For year’s concerns relative to the safety of patients and staffs in health care has been a major topic. Safety is always important while taking care of our patients. Being a nurse we take the role of people putting their life in our hands, and it’s our duty to practice safe medicine and maintain
There are many aspects that a health care worker must have while working with patients but quality patient care is an aspect that will help exceed while at work. Factors that come with quality patient care are attitude, actions, and quality of work. Having these factors in the right way will show your patients that you care about them and you want to help them.
Patient safety is a critical component of the care nurses deliver as we strive to prevent harm to our patients. Nurses work hard every day to provide safe and competent care in the setting in which they work. Gregory et al (2015) defines patient safety as, “the reduction and mitigation of unsafe acts within the health–care system, as well as through the use of best practices, shown to lead to optimal outcomes” (Gregory et al, 2015, p. 233) (also referenced as Davies, Hebert, & Hoffman, 2003, p. 12). Maintaining patient safety is very important to nursing care and health-care. The mother of nursing, Florence Nightingale, once stated, “It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the
After reviewing the literature, discuss the evidence regarding what in-hospital practices may impact on the initiation and duration of breastfeeding. Include in your discussion the role of the midwife.
I like that you mentioned patient’s safety on your post. Patient safety is such an important part of our health care system and it helps define quality health care. Keeping our patients safe is a challenging issue because errors can and do happen. As nurses we need to make sure we are taking all appropriate actions to limit the amount of mistakes that will put our patients at risk.
Patient safety is the top priority for professional nursing. Medication errors result in thousands of preventable deaths each year. Thus, nurses provide medical care and keep patients safe from unnecessary harm. The healthcare industry needs to recognize the critical role nurses play to patients. Nurses are the forefront of direct patient care, more than any other healthcare profession. “Staff on the frontlines engage and take actions to identify safety threats and to minimize or eliminate them by implementing concrete practices that prioritize safety” (Ulrich & Kear, 2014, p. 454).
Patient’s safety is an essential and vital component of quality of care. Yet, healthcare providers face many challenges in today’s healthcare environment in trying to keep patients safe. Healthcare organizations are embracing the sciences of safety, improvement, human factors, and complexity to transform their culture into a culture of safety in high reliability. Nurses are the front lines of safety and quality processes and outcomes. Therefore, nurses are required to both understand and develop the skills needed to improve care processes and to own the work of improvement as a professional responsibility.
The growing demand for quality and affordability in healthcare has peaked in the United States in these recent years. The goal in today’s health care is to manage costs while improving healthcare quality outcomes and patient satisfaction. To adapt the efforts towards improving the quality of care, it is important to begin by defining quality. Quality is purposed by the care experienced by patients, family members, and the general public; in addition to, the safety of care, effectiveness of care, availability and accessibility of care, and the environment (Horne, 2014).