Creating a Culture of Patient Safety (Nursing)

00:01 All right, let's talk about patient safety.

00:04 So yes, you hear about patient safety all the time in the news, from your instructor, from your faculty people.

00:11 So safety is so much a huge deal for us as nursing students and health care providers.

00:18 So first of all, remember to keep this at the forefront of all your nursing practice.

00:23 So let's talk about safety and why is it so, so important? and what are all the positive things that can come from it? So keep in mind that if we're safe with our patients, we can definitely make their disease much less.

00:37 The other thing to think about, they don't want to be in the hospital really long time for our mistakes.

00:43 So let's make sure we helpfully keep that length of stay down, because we're putting safety first.

00:49 And don't forget about that just overall, safety is gonna help that patient feel better and do better.

00:55 Also with safety, we're gonna engage our patients better.

00:59 We're gonna do those safety checks and it's gonna make them feel much better about our relationship between provider and nurse, and for between provider and patient.

01:09 The other thing is with safety, a lot of that is communicating with our patients.

01:13 We forget a lot of the times, the patient knows a lot about their diagnosis, and can communicate with us what needs to be done and what's best for them.

01:23 Not only that, safety overall just makes their experience better.

01:27 They have much more sense of well being because they have a trust between them and us.

01:34 So we just discussed how patient safety is first and foremost.

01:38 So number one, we've got to think about all the different processes that are in place in the healthcare system to make the patient experience better, and for us to keep them safe.

01:48 So don't forget about performance improvement.

01:51 What we're talking about by this is we want our hospital to perform its best.

01:55 We want to look good, we want our performance to be good so we have a great patient experience, and we have good patient outcomes.

02:03 So not only that, as an individual unit manager, we want to give the best patient care.

02:08 So our performance matters.

02:10 So the other part of the hospital to consider, this part may be new for you.

02:14 It's called risk management.

02:16 So they're hidden somewhere down in the basement, probably don't know where they're at, but risk management is an integral part of patient safety.

02:24 So the reason why that may be, let's say, unfortunately, as a nurse, medication errors, and we'll talk about that a little bit later in the presentation, medication errors do happen by the hands of us as a nurse.

02:36 So we've got to keep an eye on that and track it and figure out maybe why that happened.

02:41 So that's where risk management comes in.

02:45 So next, we've talked about this in other parts of our series.

02:49 That current reliable technology is so very important.

02:54 We use it so many times when I'm giving medications to my patient.

02:58 It helps prompt me in case I try to give the wrong dose to the patient.

03:02 It also tells other providers all of the necessary information that's needed for patient care.

03:08 Okay, so now let's talk about evidence-based practice.

03:12 Evidence-based practice, otherwise known as EBP is huge in nursing school.

03:17 You're gonna hear this over and over and over again, so don't forget this point.

03:22 So EBP is important for patients because we use research to provide the safest way to provide care.

03:30 Okay, so next, let's talk about safe work environment.

03:33 There's a lot of things that can come to mind for me.

03:36 One of them, is there enough nurses to even take care of all the patients on the floor? That's a scary thought as a nurse.

03:43 The other thing is, do we have enough or necessary equipment even to take care of the patient? You can imagine me trying to do my job without any gloves.

03:52 That kind of creates some issues.

03:55 Something I like to tell my new nurses that graduate that we're all so proud of, when they go into the workforce, one of the things we like to tell them is say, hey, talk to that manager and ask them, 'how long is my orientation process?' If you tell me it's two days, you better get out of there.

04:11 So think about where you're going to work and you want a safe work environment.

04:15 For us as nurses to have a safe work environment, we're gonna be able to provide good patient safety.

04:21 The next thing to continue and to talk about is staff education.

04:26 Man, I can't stress this enough.

04:27 So the worst thing that can happen is you have unadequately trained nurses, they're taking care of a really complex patient.

04:35 This is dangerous for everybody. Right? This is the worst thing that we can do is not adequately train our nurses for patient care and complex issues.

04:44 So we show a disservice for everybody.

04:46 So staff education, not just us as nurses, our new orientation, but even those health care providers.