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Culture of Safety
There are a lot of dangers to hospital staff and hospitals in general when it comes to patient safety. Poor patient safety management often results in nurses and physicians experiencing a lot of stress and losing potential revenue. More importantly, poor patient safety may lead to patient’s death or serious harm to their physical and mental health. Compromised patient safety is one of the leading causes of deaths amongst patients in the US (“Organizational Safety Culture – Linking patient and worker safety,” 2017). Since the issue became so polarizing and crucial, patient safety measures became one of the focuses of every health care institution.
However, the topic of safety does not only affect patients. Health care workers, too, have a lot of dangers. Those risks are particularly critical regarding the so-called “burnout,” i. e. stressful environment. The threats that nurses and physicians face may also heavily affect their personal life (significant ones, relatives, family). Patient safety and the safety of the environment in which the health care workers carry out their duties are often the foundation of every hospital’s policy. For example, the United States Department of Labor provides several resources and tools designed to create and promote safety in health care systems (“Safety and Health Management Systems,” 2017).
The important thing to understand is how the safety culture is created and what its components are. There are five essential elements to any safety culture within a certain health care institution:
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The actions that institution’s leaderships take to promote safety amongst their staff and patients;
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Involvement of institution’s workers in the process of planning out the safety measures;
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Investments in the required safety equipment that allows workers to secure both their patients and themselves;
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The amount of significance that the safety precautions possess in the institution’s collective;
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Finally, the measures that the institution’s leaderships undertake to ensure that the newly recruited specialists fully emerge in the safe environment created in the institution.
These basic measures are the minimal requirements to establish a safe environment where risks are almost non-existent. If an institution’s managerial personnel focus on these components enough, they are sure to achieve a highly professional and safe procedure of delivering care. Although highly critical, this topic tends not to cause every health care institution to adopt these measures. Some of the hospitals are still operating without paying attention to patient safety and the safety of their staff. This often results in a lot of hazards and potential threats.
Field Examples
Each nurse (and I am not an exception) deals with patient safety now and again. Each time, the threats to patient or nurse’s safety come in different forms. For example, at my place of work every nurse has to make sure that the patient is put in a comfortable and soothing environment. Each item that is used has to be sanitized before application, and managerial personnel always make sure that these basic measures are carried out in full. If a nurse forgets to air a patient’s room or ensure that the bed linen is clean, they will receive a reprimand each time. These measures may potentially lead to a nurse not receiving full payment or other penalties. These simple examples demonstrate how focusing the patient safety may lead to increasing health care services because there have been no major threats to any of our patients precisely due to these measures.
References
Organizational Safety Culture – Linking patient and worker safety. (2017). Web.
Safety and Health Management Systems. (2017). Web.
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