What role do the nurses play in advocating for a safe work environment?
Nurses' roles in advocating for a safe working environment are structured into three categories: nurse investigator, advocate, and educator. The investigative role is practiced in the assessment and evaluation stages of patient safety. This phase prevents patients from being exposed to health hazards. The educator and advocate roles are interventions. The two provide patients with information about risks and set measures and policies to prevent them from existing risks.
Investigative Role
Nurses are always alert to environmental factors that have an impact on safety. They act as investigators when they take environmental safety histories to determine trends in exposure and injury. After that, the trends are used to predict outcomes and eliminate hazards. Also, nurses demonstrate investigative roles when they work with interdisciplinary teams to determine the effects of exposure to health. This occurs when a factor is yet to be categorized as a hazard but has potentially harmful effects. The cooperation between nurses and agencies to associate or dissociate such factors with safety helps healthcare providers to identify and eliminate threats that have been ignored previously. Besides the identification of potential hazards, nurses initiate and engage researchers in controlling identified risks. Risks and hazard assessment, part of nurses' investigative role, play a critical role in classifying risks to prioritize eliminating most harmful hazards.
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Educative Role
Nurses provide patient information that is critical in averting injuries and ensuring workplaces are safe. Examples of the education provided include teaching vulnerable patients how to get up, move, and avoid potential hazards. The educative role of nurses extends to families, workers, and communities. These groups interact with patients at healthcare facilities, and the knowledge extended to them through education is significant in maintaining a safe environment. Also, the education takes a practical leadership approach when nurses become actively involved in routine duties that promote a clean and safe working environment. According to Ezzeddine (2018), the educative role is demonstrated if nurses have competencies in detecting and reporting errors and risks and promoting behaviors that lead to harm reduction.
Advocacy Role
Issues related to environmental hazards attract social and political attention. Theoretically, the issues can be solved internally with hospital guidelines. However, some risks and hazards unfold in a heated political and social context. In such scenarios, nurses' role becomes vital because they contact patients and understand patient safety needs more than anyone else (Davoodvand et al., 2016). This calls for nurses' advocacy roles in solving issues that require policymaking. They are commonly involved in meeting agencies and organizations as patient representatives to advocate for laws that eliminate current and future hazards. Nurses’ scientific knowledge gives them an upper hand in negotiations that individuals would not have achieved positive outcomes. As a nursing role, advocacy is prevention-oriented and contributes more to setting laws that transform workplaces into a safe environment for patients and healthcare providers. Top of Form
How can administration improve safety in the workplace and decrease violence?
Provision of Adequate Resources
The administration must provide adequate resources that promote patient and employees' safety. Examples of critical resources include sanitary and protective equipment. Access to adequate water, disinfectants, and dryers contribute to proper hygiene, essential in ensuring safety. The administration must also avail personal protective equipment for health workers and patients to ensure everyone is adequately protected. Inadequate resources are a common source of conflict among patients and workers, leading to possible violence. This occurs when risks are high and individuals struggle to achieve personal protection from insufficient resources. Availing adequate resources promotes safety and decreases violence.
Provision of Standard Processes of Operation
Safety is promoted, and conflicts are averted when the administration sets out standards of operation. For example, the administration must set a standard process for handover to eliminate risks associated with inappropriate handovers that expose patients (Vaismoradi et al., 2020). Also, a proper handover eliminates workload distribution conflicts, thus preventing violence among workers.
References
Davoodvand, S., Abbaszadeh, A., & Ahmadi, F. (2016). Spiritual development in Iranian nurses. Nursing Ethics , 24 (8), 936-949. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733016629772
Ezzeddine, S. H. (2018). Patient safety: Nursing education to practice. Journal of Perioperative & Critical Intensive Care Nursing , 04 (01). https://doi.org/10.4172/2471-9870.10000139
Vaismoradi, M., Tella, S., A. Logan, P., Khakurel, J., & Vizcaya-Moreno, F. (2020). Nurses’ adherence to patient safety principles: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 17 (6), 2028. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17062028
