Module 1: The Louise Batz Story
It is normal for patients to expect safe care in a hospital. This can be because of personal reasons or because of the structure and care of the facility. Most patients and families usually expect safe care as in a hospital, which is expected because patients believe in doctors' and nurses' professionalism. Besides, patients trust healthcare professionals with their lives because they know they were trained and took an oath to protect lives. Before going to a hospital, people ensure that the hospital is effective, caring, are safe, have good leadership, and are responsive to people's needs.
Patients usually expect good hospitals to have enough nurses on duty with the right, experience, knowledge, and skills and hence free of preventable medical errors. Good hospitals lookout for signs that a patient's life is getting worse than before. Also, the staff keeps checking for any risks in the patient's health. If something goes wrong, the hospital is expected to investigate the matter to prevent its future reoccurrence and take full responsibility for the issue.
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Besides, patients expect hospital staff to ensure that vulnerable staff is kept safe from any harm, especially medical errors and negligence. A routine check-up is usually done by nurses on duty to ensure that everything with the patient is okay. Most hospitals maintain a safe environment, which reflects the vigilance and compassion for the patient's welfare in the eyes of the patients. Usually, most patients will inquire about a hospital and the facility's processes before considering seeking health care in that facility. This means that most patients seek healthcare in hospitals that they trust, and hence it is normal for them to expect safe care in these facilities.
Module 1: Safety Culture Part 1 (Hierarchy)
What struck the most
No one ever tells nurses that they will be saving lives until they start working and see all the opportunities that present themselves to do that by calling a doctor to tell him about a patient's deteriorating condition. Besides, there are three things that nurses have that their physician partners can never have. First, they have more than eight to twelve hours a day with the patients to monitor their condition. Second, they have information about the physicians' practices and what they do. When they forget to order antibiotics for a patient going to surgery or a severe condition, the nurse will remind them.
Thirdly, a nurse can see how different surgeons approach the same thing, the same donors or disease, and so he or she can share this information that has a great potential to help the patients. Nurses get the opportunity to be present in a patient's life during their most vulnerable points, a time in which they need the care most, something other professionals do not get to do. This brings about the power differentials between physicians and nurses.
Critical features of a safer work environment
As a nurse, a safe work environment refers to an environment where the nurses can keep the patients and their colleagues from harm both in terms of emotional, psychological, or physical harm. However, to keep the patients safe, the nurses have to be safe first. Besides, a safer work environment refers to a situation where nurses work as a team in the absence of the hierarchy that separates them. In this environment, everyone treats the other as an equal, and no discipline thinks that they are better. Besides, a safe work environment is where the staff agree to treat every patient as their family member without tolerating any negativity or rudeness.
Module 1: Safety Culture Part 2 (Breaking Down Hierarchy)
Nurses speak up because they see a serious issue that they want to change. Housekeepers watch out for patients' falls to help create a safe environment for the patients and hence reducing injuries resulting from falls. Besides, nurses speak up when conversations do not turn out the way they wanted them to. However, some nurses choose to remain quiet for fear of making things worse or fear of retaliation. If nurses fail to speak or housekeepers fail to watch out for patients' falls, there is likely to be more deaths from preventable medical errors.
Therefore, nurses have to communicate to keep their patients safe. However, hierarchy tends to block effective communication in healthcare. Everyone has to feel that they are of value and are essential to the team. This sense of value and belonging to a team is also what pushes a housekeeper to save a patient's life in case of danger of a fall, something that otherwise would not happen if the housekeepers are made to feel less important and that their work is mediocre. When everyone calls the housekeepers by name and treats them with respect, just like in any other profession, they will always look out for the patient. For instance, if a patient is about to be admitted to a room that has not been disinfected, the housekeeper would let the nurses know and save the patient from further infections.
Sometimes as a dialysis nurse, I feel the urge to silence myself because I think what good is talking going to do anyway? Maybe speaking up is going to make things worse. There are times when I feel silence is the best option since when you speak up, no one listens. However, there are some specific individuals who, no matter what they say, people would follow. It is, therefore, feels better to keep quiet to avoid getting into trouble. However, until everyone realizes that until I realize that everyone is of value, none of that will change.
Module 1: What is Patient Safety?
It is a wonder the scale of challenges in patient safety improvement since it is an area that many, including nurses, physicians, and even the patients themselves have ignored. Besides, patients believe that hospitals are safe places and hence no need to be concerned, especially when going for a check-up. Unfortunately, hospitals are not always safe since they are busy contract places where many talented and dedicated people do remarkable work and save lives every day. Due to the busy nature of hospitals, there are always safety issues once in a while.
To improve patient safety, there first has to be strong leadership and a team that works together. This will ensure that patient safety is a top priority since it will reduce the infection rates that occur when there are mistakes. Besides, strong teams ensure a strong line of communication between the hospital staff and patients and families. Having a good team makes out for the mistakes of each other since everyone makes mistakes. This should be the key step in improving patient safety, especially in hospitals where hierarchy is valued, and people do not work better as a team or hospitals that lack good leadership. When one makes a mistake, and there is no good team to catch that mistake, the patient suffers the most.
Patient safety can also be improved by reducing mistakes in medicine and reducing infections that could be prevented. These are the most common harms that can come to the patient when there is a lack of a strong and committed team. Over one million patients in the US get the wrong medications each year while in the hospital. Even good doctors and nurses can make very tiny mistakes with vast consequences. Also, 1 out of 25 patients get infections while in the hospital, something that would not have happened if there were a committed team.
