Essay Example on Quality and Safety in Healthcare Practice

A culture of safety exists, and it is defined as the individual and group product of values, competencies, patterns as well as attitudes which determine several behaviors that determine the style and commitment in the programs of health and safety found in any health organization. Health organizations can create a culture of safety through the identification and application of practical measures that are usually associated with practices of safety-enhanced at different levels of organizations. Nurses are the main practitioners in the delivery of efficient care, which has high levels of quality. Certain conditions that are acquired by patients while they are in the hospital cause harm to them and extend their stay there yet they experience such conditions due to the lack of care and quality by physicians or nurses in charge.

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One sixty-four-year-old man was taken to the hospital with several health issues and mostly because he was having trouble with his breathing system. The care team that involved the medical physicians and the nurses helped him very fast and resolved the problem where they were able to regulate the issue at hand. Unfortunately, the nurses forgot to administer one standard treatment that caused major harm to the patient. A chest x-ray was done on the man, and no signs of pneumonia were identified, which made him be admitted to the hospital for further checking and treatment of an exacerbation in acute COPD. This was as a result of a mild infection in the respiratory tract. He also received other various treatments such as blood work that showed signs of his kidneys working extra hard because of the infection. The patient was treated with oral steroids, bronchodilators, and IV fluids, which improved his situation gradually. One day, however, the patient complained about an acute pain that he felt in one of his legs and upon further research, the physician on duty found out that the doctor who had treated the patient had not administered prophylaxis for blood thinners to prevent clotting of blood.

He was treated for the clot and was expected to extend his stay in the hospital for more medication. Five days later, he was found on the floor of his room, and the nurses realized that he had a seizure which was treated very fast, and this stopped the seizure. The medical team wanted to know the cause of the patient's seizure, and they noticed that the daytime nurse on that day had not administered to him one of his medications for seizure because it was not available in the hospital that day. The nurse did not notify the patient or the physicians, yet still, she did not include an automatic alert in the medication system. The physicians had to restart the patient's medication, and he was discharged ten days later, yet if he had received proper treatment from the beginning, he would have been discharged after two to three days.

The role of the nurses in this situation was to ensure that the patient received the proper medication right from the beginning and that he did not skip any of his medications. They had to reduce the adverse risks which were related to medical exposure in different conditions. The appropriate use of prophylaxis could have helped to prevent errors, and proper communication could have helped to prevent the lack of administration of medication by the nurse. They had to learn from the first error that occurred and work hard to ensure that the patient was given proper care and treatment to prevent the second harm and more damage to the patient. The patient had a role to play to ensure that his safety and the quality of the medication offered was up to the required standards by asking the nurse on duty whether all medication was administered to him and if not how it would be administered to him later. He complained of the pains he felt in several parts of his body, and this helped to perform several medical checkups that helped to avoid permanent damage and proper medication.

There exists a relationship between care of the patients and the outcome because in this case, poor practices of care and medical practices led to the patient developing several other complications in the body than he already had. This led to the patient staying in the hospital longer than was expected. Where poor care of patients is realized, there is likely to be a negative outcome that may lead to the death of the patients or even permanent damage to the patient. In this situation, the care environment was affected by the outcome with the patient experiencing more body complications due to the mistakes of the nurse and the physician, and this led to an extension in the time spent in the hospital. A quality model was not employed in this situation, and the hospital needed to employ a Quality Health Outcomes Model where it would have been used to assess the needs, response, and perceptions of the patients. This model is used in the evaluation of the structure of the hospital as well as care to improve the health results that are required in the hospital.

Several actions are needed to improve the outcome that was realized and prevent it from happening again such as effective communication, recognition, and respect of all staff, and good leadership with the nurse leaders being committed to healthy environments of work. Staff working in the hospital should be skilled to meet the needs of the various patients.

Conclusion

The safety of patients is a crucial aspect of the provision of health care that is of high quality. Most of the work that defines the safety of patients and different practices help to prevent any harm that may be reaching the patients. Different negative outcomes are realized where there is no adequate care and safety, and they include morbidity and mortality hence nurses, as well as patients, have to be serious in the coordination and surveillance which aids in the reduction of such negative outcomes. Many nurses have a lot of work that is evaluated to show the impact that nursing care has on positive indicators of quality like self-care and several measures which improve the status of health.