Question

Despite the money and resources being devoted to hardware quality, the complexity and pace within the system causes many to respond with workarounds just to get it done. Have you seen this happen? Everyone is being asked to do more. How much is too much? Who is safe guarding the patient? Share an example where you feel circumstances and change have impacted quality.

What is the Tipping Point when we reach a place where care that is given is not quality, and it actually becomes unsafe in your example? How could you as a CNL(clinical Nurse Leader) address this care concern?

Answer 1

The nurse has to provide care based on the needs of patients, applying knowledge and skills, and the gained experience in order to provide a safe patient care. Sometimes the standard of care falls due to lack of resources, standards, and policy of an organization. In that cases, nurses have much responsibility on their heads. The Clinical Nurse Leader has to manage the complexity of the healthcare environment and take efforts to improve the healthcare system to provide a safe, quality care.

Many factors such as disease process, technology, resources, clinicians, procedures, policies etc interpret the quality care. In addition, human errors are the more complex factor such as near misses or events. The Clinical Nurse Leader face challenges such as heavy workload of staff, poor working environmental conditions, the improper structure of the healthcare systems. An adverse drug event is another issue of the healthcare environment. The Nurse leader should have good communication with the staffs and to assess the strength and weakness of the health system.

In my experience, I have seen of violation behavior because of inadequate experiences and training. This leads to unsafe procedures and harm to the patient. The Nurse Leader should solve the problem by skill-based, rule-based, and Knowledge-based. For example, Skill-based errors are the interruptions and distractions such as stress, emotions, fatigue will divert the attention of the caregiver. Mistakes, errors, crossing the rule are considered as rule-based and Knowledge-based errors.

The Clinical Nurse Leader is responsible for providing safe care irrespective of money and resources. She does not allow to fall of care under any circumstances in her presence. She has to minimize the possible predictable errors due to negligence. She has to provide a stress-free appropriate working environment for the staffs. She was able to differentiate between the reportable errors and the adverse events. Provide proper training, guidance, and support to the working staff and supervision of the staff members. The main goal is to provide safety environment for patient and free from injury. Medication errors can be preventable by proper administering of medication. The Clinical Nurse Leader should have a good quality to provide safe quality care and to enhance the patient safety culture.