Reflections on Patients Safety



Reflections on Patients Safety

Introduction

Nursing is considered to be one of the most sacred professions as it involves treating precious lives. Nursing constitutes a major part of a healthcare system. An efficient healthcare system is said to be the one in which patients' safety measures are carefully outlined. Besides, critical thinking is vital for maintaining optimal performance of a healthcare system. A series of patients' safety incidents have been reported in USA. It is essential to understand the adverse effects of a patients' safety incident. In this regard, the write up reports an event that resulted due to work overload. The paper explores the adverse effects of the incident on patients' safety. Further, the write up discuses how these issues can be mitigated. The discussion begins with a brief account on patients' safety for establishing context.

Discussion

Patient safety refers to preventing healthcare errors and associated ill effects to patients (WHO, 2012). Though health care practices have become advanced it has also increased complexities. It is noted that patient safety incident usually occurs in an overloaded health care setting. Helmchen et al reported an event which involved a middle aged woman. The woman went through a common elective surgery. She reported that she was allergic to aspirin. Her allergy details were entered as free text and the record was printed on a paper. Doctor gave another Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory drug. There was another woman who had gone through the same surgical procedure. The nurse gave two doses of aspirin which resulted in severe reaction. The lady had difficulty in breathing and needed intensive care. She survived the acute drug reaction with the efforts of intensive care service (Helmchen et al, 2011). The hospital has a general practice of keeping the general information of a patient to the patient's bedside. The nurses have to follow the protocol of giving a look to the provided information before administering drug dosage. The situation suggests that the nurse was overburdened by the allotted number of patients. Moreover, the nurse had worked for 8 days consecutively. She did not have a single holiday due to work overload. The nurse reported the issue as soon as she learnt about it.

Analyzing CT in the event (as per the guidelines)

The nurse was very much confident in her reasoning. She revealed the whole situation honestly. There was no evidence of anyone standing back and explaining the situation. It was ...