Nurses are the bastion of safety in a healthcare setting. As frontline workers, they play a pivotal role in ensuring that safety standards are followed and the utmost care is taken. Nurses use their clinical judgement, past experiences, continuous presence, and advocacy to ensure the same. They’re often the first to notice when something seems amiss. A tired colleague under pressure.
A sudden change in the patient’s behavior. A missed handover detail. Their decisive action can play an instrumental role in avoiding mishaps. There are many steps and strategies nurses can adopt to ensure a safe, secure, and rehabilitative space for their patients to recover in.
1. Be Aware of the Latest Equipment and Procedures
Staying on top of new equipment or procedures is absolutely critical. In an emergency situation, impulses take over. That is precisely why adequate training is necessary to rewrite the mental models and inculcate the new practices. For example, if nurses are trained in a better way to deal with airway obstruction, they will easily be able to handle a choking patient under duress without any confusion or panic. They will have no time to look around for a colleague or an instruction booklet. Hence, regular training is of paramount importance.
2. Avoid Gaps in Communication
Patient care is not a one-person job. Collaboration is required across the board for a successful discharge. Nurses, doctors, allied health practitioners, administration, the patient, and often the patient’s family all need to be aligned and on the same page.
For this to happen, clear lines of communication within the team and with external stakeholders are essential. Nurses need to make sure that all the required information is relayed in the handover during a shift change. Even the patient has to be given adequate space and time to enable the flow of information. Establishing a good rapport with the patient can help allay such concerns.
3. Adhere to Safety Guidelines
To ensure the highest standards of safe practice at the workplace, nurse leaders should ensure that all staff members adhere to guidelines and recommendations established by the American Nurses Association (ANA) as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
These guidelines revolve around infection control, sharps disposal, PPE use, and medication safety protocols. It is important to follow them to the T as they are developed after rigorous research, comprehensive lessons, regular incident reviews, and frontline feedback by experienced nurse leaders. Instead of viewing these guidelines as a mere formality, they should be deemed as best practice for the benefit of all.
4. Juggle Workload and Staff Burnout
Overworked nurses tend to make more clinical errors. Exhaustion can have a debilitating effect on precision, concentration, reaction speed, as well as decision making. In a healthcare setting, this can be life-threatening. Nurse leaders should be trained to spot burnout. Posture, agility, and reaction time are great physical indicators to observe. Increased irritability, emotional detachment, and a drop in attention to detail are some of the behavioral signs. To prevent fatigue, adequate staff ratios, shift rotation, and regular breaks are essential.
5. Report Everything
Nurses might have the tendency to avoid incidents or events that they deem minor. But small lapses can snowball into major issues. A mislabeled sample. A faulty bed alarm or even a missed medication might seem innocuous in silos but if no remedial action is taken it can be repeated.
Reporting them as and when they happen helps identify patterns, fix broken processes, and improve protocols before a major mishap takes place. Nurse leaders should identify potential barriers and provide adequate training to their unit on properly documenting such instances.
6. Don’t Forget About Patient Education
There are times when patients are discharged with complex care routines, multiple medications, and even follow-up appointments. Nurses mustn’t rush through the same and properly guide the patient. Some patients might have special needs as well. Making sure that adequate information is relayed without any lapses ensures that the recovery is on track and the risk of errors at home is minimized. Safety does not stop when a patient is leaving the hospital, it follows them to the home as well.
All nurses across different sectors, from registered nurses to critical care nurses and graduates of online FNP programs, play an instrumental role in cultivating a culture of safety in the healthcare setting. Being cognizant of the evolving protocols, methods, and procedures, and getting adequate training can reduce the chances of freezing in crunch situations. Establishing proper channels of communication helps create a conducive atmosphere for patient recovery.
Adhering to the industry safety guidelines can prevent major mishaps and reduce strain during busy periods. Taking timely rest and rotating shifts smartly can help delay burnout. Reporting everything instills a culture of documentation, which reduces the risk of human error. Finally, being patient in discharge ensures proper recovery at home for the patient.
