Nursing Practice

Nursing Practice

Safe Patient Care And Importance To Professional Nursing Practice

Introduction

In essence, medical mistakes that are committed by the practitioner either due to misinformation, negligence or any other reason have been found to be responsible for causing injury to 1 out of 25 patients and has been estimated to accountable for 48,000 to 98,000 patient deaths every year. This is what calls for concern because so many lives are lost which could not have otherwise been lost it good practice were observed in delivery of service. The cost is also very high. Estimated are that errors from the health care service delivery cost more than 5 million dollars every year in a very large teaching facility and the errors identified as preventable in the healthcare system cost about 17 to 29 billion dollars every year. Most of these healthcare mistakes are system- related and not characteristic of individual carelessness or misconduct. The key to alleviating such medical errors lies with concentrating on improvement of systems of delivery of care and not victimizing individuals (Leape 2009). However this should not give medical practitioners a free pass when they make mistakes. Its with this objective in mind that the paper will address the significance of safe patient care to the professional nursing practice. It is very importance that the nursing profession be safe for general public. The nurses should be helped to reduce chances of errors or committing mistakes while taking care of patients especially the chronically and critically ill. This is only reduced when nurses comply with clinically and safe medical practices that are evidence based.

Counter Arguments

There are several setbacks in the attainment of patient safety with regard to the mistakes that are often made by the nurses or the entire system. As indicated from the introduction, nurses so make mistakes yes but it has been shown that the mistakes they make are in most cases prompted by the rigid systems rules or guidelines. In facilities that tare understaffed, nurses could be forced top work very long hours even when they are totally exhausted (Leape 2009). In

Nursing Practice

such a state they tend to work carelessly and my end up committing mistakes.

Patient’s information id very important ant the nurses can misuse it to cause conflict in the delivery of service. patients have aright to their records and medical practitioners also need to be protected from, its been argued that nurses are not experienced in such matters and that this has caused them to make mistakes that result in patient injury and so the patients rather than the system should be blamed for the safety of patients(Currie & Watterson 2007).

Medical injury due to mistakes is a problem that was established long ago and several solutions have been developed towards reducing chances of such mistakes from repeating. Nurses have been for along time been blamed for the mistakes that occur. Some of the mistakes yes are caused by the nurse but, its the system that is not well structured to handles emergencies. Many nurses stay long hours to take care of the sick, voluntarily (Leape 2009). There are strict criteria for the qualification of nurses and also for their registration, there is constancy evaluation of their competence in most facilities ands beside they work alongside professional doctors and other medical specialists.

The basic concern is not that in hospitals there are bad people but rather there are bad systems. There need to be a charge from focusing on individual error to concentrating on defective systems which then can be corrected and made efficient (Currie & Watterson 2007).

The Arguments

First, the Michigan legislation on Safe Patient Care prohibits compulsory overtime for nurses who are registered. Compulsory overtime forces nurses who are already exhausted of the days work working in an understaffed facility to stay late to work for more hours and multiple shifts. this is what the results in mistakes because exhausted horses are bound to commit serious mistakes because of exhaustion. Patients have died due to abuse of the compulsory nurse

Nursing Practice

overtime. Doing this is hazardous just like forcing fatigued pilots to fly a plane; they may doze off and cause serious accident not because they are bad people, negligent of sadists but due to physical and mental condition at that time. Most Nurses work very hard to offer safe healthcare and sacrifice their time, voluntarily caring for patients (Leape 2009).

The most important focus on the delivery o safer patient service has been on implementation of practices. This is very critical to the field, but it has been established that the sector requires even more to be done; several lines of thought have hence emerged. Transparency is very important since it opens up the cause of any problems where solution can be found easily. Recognition of patients’ involvement is another factor. When patients are actively involved in their care, few mistakes are bound to come up. Most patients understand that there should be at least minimum number of registered nurses in a facility and these determines their safety and risk. the National Consumers League study discovered that more that half of the patient knew and reported that their health was compromised due to deficient nurse patient ratio (Currie & Watterson 2007).

The Plan

Nursing is a very wonderful profession and requires a lot of expertise, endurance and dedication furor one to succeed in it. However, fatigue and poor conditions at workplaces drive the nurses away from the patients increasing rates of understaffing. Nurses end up looking fro jobs elsewhere or pursue careers that mover them away from patient care. The senate bill 169 has the regulation about staffing limits and constraints on compulsory overtime (Currie & Watterson 2007). This will ensure more nurses are employed who are registered as well as improve their working conditions and as a result better performance will be observed.

Basically the delivery of safe service should aim at seeking transparency ands eliminating secrecy; shift the medical care from provider centric to patient centric; develop a just culture for handling problems, rather than a punitive environment; shift the care models from dependence to independence, inter-professional teamwork; address problems as system failures and not individual errors and finally ensure accountability on every stakeholders sides from management, nurses to patients (Leape 2009).

Nursing Practice

Conclusion

The provision of safe patient care should client-centric and this has been a major objective in the medical sector in many places. The safety of the patient is a serious concern while providing for better health services since it’s the patient who spends the money and who need the services. Furthermore service providers are under obligation to take care of the patients by oath. The use of best medical practices and newer technology will go along way helping improve care delivery. This is because the hardware facilitates communication and data exchange while providing improved healthcare to the patients and practitioners can be confident when administering the care. Decisions in the medical field will be more informed and patients will get personalized care via streamlined experiences

Nursing Practice

Nursing Practice

References

Currie L. & Watterson L. (2007). Challenges In Delivering Safe Patient Care. Comments On A Quality Improvement plan. Journal of Nursing Management. Blackwell publishing. Vol.15.No. 2. pp. 161 – 169 (7)

Leape. L.L (2009). Errors In Medicine. Clinica Chimica Acta, Vol. 404. Issue 1pp 1 – 7