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2/25/22, 4:10 PM Week 4 Lesson: Safety: Transitions in Professional Nursing

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Week 4 Lesson: Safety

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Safety

Nurses are concerned with safety and quality of patient care. Throughout history, many nurses have actively worked to find ways to improve patient safety and quality of nursing care. This week, we will consider the broad topics of safety and quality improvement in nursing care and our roles in this important endeavor.

Healthy Workplace Environments Promote Safety for Nurses

Safety in the workplace is important in nursing. American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN, n.d.) stated that six standards are present in the healthiest nursing work environments:

Skilled communication True collaboration Effective decision-making Appropriate staffing Meaningful recognition Authentic leadership

Nurses need to be safe from harm in their work environments. Much has been written about incivility and workplace violence in nursing. Oja (2017) claimed that "civility among critical care nurses is important for achieving positive patient outcomes" (p. 345).

The American Nurses Association (n.d.a) is concerned about health of nurses and is promoting its Healthly Nurse, Healthy Nation challenge. This is "an initiative to connect and engage nurses, employers, and organizations around improving health in five areas: physical

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2/25/22, 4:10 PM Week 4 Lesson: Safety: Transitions in Professional Nursing

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activity, nutrition, rest, quality of life, and safety" (ANA, n.d.a, para. 1). ANA also has resources to help prevent violence and bullying in the workplace (n.d.b.). These workplace health issues are of concern to nurses, managers, and facilities. When nurses practice in a healthy environment, their focus can be on patient care and outcomes.

Patient Safety

Nurses value safety for patients. Doing no harm is often considered a moral and an ethical principle in nursing and healthcare. Safe care is always our plan.

Safety is an important part of quality. Without safety, quality is not an issue. Care is either safe or it is not. Quality, on the other hand, can vary by degrees and can be measured. Is the care of minimum quality, or is it of the highest quality? Safety and quality are often considered together because quality is not possible without the baseline of safety.

Think About It

"Safety: The Nurse of the Future will minimize risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performance (QSEN, 2007)" (Massachusetts Department of Higher Education Nursing Initiative, 2016, p. 42). Safety is "critical to promoting high quality patient care" (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2008, p. 13).

"Quality Improvement: The Nurse of the Future uses data to monitor the outcomes of care processes, and uses improvement methods to design and test changes to continuously improve the quality and safety of health care systems (QSEN, 2007)" (Massachusetts Department of Higher Education Nursing Initiative, 2016, p. 42).

Patient safety is important in all clinical areas. The Joint Commission (2020) publishes National Patient Safety Goals each year for various healthcare settings. These goals are designed to improve patient safety. The goals focus on both problems and solutions (The Joint Commission, 2020).

Settings include:

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2/25/22, 4:10 PM Week 4 Lesson: Safety: Transitions in Professional Nursing

https://chamberlain.instructure.com/courses/98594/pages/week-4-lesson-safety?module_item_id=14280786 3/4

(The Joint Commission, 2020)

Settings Transcript

Safety Goals

These safety goals change year to year and often contain topics such as:

Patient identification Staff communication Alarm safety Infection prevention Surgical errors Medication safety Others specific to the site

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2/25/22, 4:10 PM Week 4 Lesson: Safety: Transitions in Professional Nursing

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(The Joint Commission, 2020)

A culture of safety, where all nurses freely report errors without fear of punishment, is a positive step toward fewer errors and improved patient safety. This just culture (sometimes called a no blame culture) focuses on the error, not the person making the error. Systems issues are confronted with plans for improvement (Masters, 2020).

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