Teaching the culture of safety

Teaching the culture of safety

1. Describe a clinical experience that was troubling to you. Describe what bothered you about the experience and what could have you done differently, utilizing critical thinking.

Each year, there are at least 44,000 people who die in healthcare centers as a result of preventable harm. One of the clinical experiences that were troubling me a lot was the patient delay in treatment as they are forced to wait in lines before treatment even if they have severe medical conditions.

In one instance, a patient died just because he could not access medical services in time. This is a case that would have been prevented if an action would have been taken to determine how patients could access medical services faster. This experience bothers me.

What I would have done differently to ensure that this would not happen again is to come up with a strategy where patients with critical conditions are received medical services immediately. If given a chance, with the skills and experience I have, would have helped to determine the patients who need immediate attention and separate them from regular patients.

2. Describe how patients, families, individual clinicians, health care teams, and systems can contribute to promoting safety and reducing errors.

The most significant that parents, families, individual clinics, health care teams, and systems can contribute to promoting safety and reducing errors is working as a team. This is not the time when only the doctor would guarantee patient satisfaction (Barnsteiner 2011). It takes the effort of all these stakeholders in the healthcare system to promote safety and reduce errors.

Patients should always be careful that they are not being treated for the wrong reasons due to confusion. Families should also offer support to the patients while at the same time, make sure there are no errors in the treatment of the patients.

Healthcare teams should work in unison to try not to make any mistakes that can be avoided hence promoting safety in the treatment of the patients (Park, Kang & Lee 2012). Systems that have been put in place should also work to ensure that the safety of patients in the health care sector is guaranteed. These systems may include increased supervision, fatigue prevention, and workload adjustments.

3. Describe factors that create a culture of safety.

Creating a culture of safety in health care involves offering services that are safe, timely, effective, efficient, and patient-centered (Masters, 2018). These are the factors that create a culture of safety.

Safe means that the treatment of the patient should not be harmful to the patient. Timely means that the services that are offered are on time to ensure patients do not get into more critical conditions or die while waiting for the services.

Effective means that the services offered by the healthcare system are helpful to the patients. Efficient means that the services provided, such as treatment, have minimal side effects on the patients, while patient-centered means that the healthcare services offered are focused on patient satisfaction.

References

Barnsteiner, J. (2011). Teaching the culture of safety. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 16(3).

Masters, K. (2018). Role development in professional nursing practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Park, S. J., Kang, J. Y., & Lee, Y. O. (2012). A study on hospital nurses’ perception of patient safety culture and safety care activity. Journal of Korean critical care nursing, 5(1), 44-55.