Accountability: Serious Reportable Events (Nursing)

00:01 All right, let's talk about some serious events in regards to patient safety.

00:05 We talked about medication safety, handoff reports, a lot of these tools help prevent us from these near events.

00:13 And what I mean by that is, it's really serious events that happen in the hospital that we hope never occur.

00:21 So one of these has to do with criminal events.

00:25 And you're like, What on earth could happen? So here's an example: It's not like a day talk TV show, by impersonating a physician or a nurse when you do not have that credential.

00:35 That's a serious issue. I'll give an example: In my hometown, there was a guy that was portraying a dentist, and he did a lot of procedures that he was not authorized to do.

00:46 Some scary things, right? The other thing to think about is surgical events.

00:52 So number one, if I'm going on surgery, I want to make darn sure they're operating on the right thing.

00:58 Correct? You guys have probably heard this stuff in the news, but the right surgery and the right patient, and the right procedure is so very important.

01:08 This clearly is something you wish that never happens.

01:11 Also care management events, here's going back to that medication safety.

01:17 Did we give a medication that actually ended up in death for that patient, or really bad outcome? Here's another example: When you start progressing through your program, you may have to give blood products to a patient.

01:31 there's a very specific process that we make sure that blood type is compatible with our patient.

01:38 So if we don't do those checks, we can give the wrong blood to the patient, and it can cause serious reactions.

01:46 Also, let's think about patient protection.

01:49 So maybe there's a new bundle of joy that's supposed to go home with a family.

01:53 What if we discharge that infant to the wrong family? I can only imagine that those parents would be losing their mind, right? What a bad situation to be in.

02:04 The other thing is maybe your patient as a nurse wanders off for hours, and we cannot find them.

02:10 This is a 'never event' that shouldn't happen.

02:13 Sometimes with all the devices that we have, we have per product or device malfunctions, that can really harm our patient, and this is also a "never event".

02:25 And lastly, don't forget about environmental events.

02:29 Anytime we have to physically restrain a patient, this means that we've got to put certain medical devices so someone doesn't interfere with their own treatment.

02:40 So there's a lot of caveats to this, but sometimes it's medically necessary for the patient to get better.

02:46 Now the problem with this if we do not check on that patient thoroughly, and making sure that patient's safe and their needs are met, and we fail to do so, the patient can be very seriously injured and even death.

03:00 And again, this is a 'never event' that should never happen.