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Running head: SYNTHESIS OF SAFETY

Synthesis of Safety

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SYNTHESIS OF SAFETY

Synthesis of Safety

Introduction

It is the responsibility of the nurses to provide healthcare services to the patients (Barron,

2010). It is for that reason that they undergo training on various ways of ensuring they are

offering quality services. However, it does not always happen that way. Some nurses do not

comply with all the rules as stipulated in the learning institutions and healthcare facilities. During

this contact process, the nurse should ensure that he or she does not endanger the life of the

patient in the treatment process. Family members to the patient should be treated with care too as

they are undergoing psychological torture. This essay is, therefore, a critical analysis of the role

of a nurse in patient care to ensure safety and in demonstrating knowledge, skill, and attitudes

that are essential for safe quality care.

Patient care concern and barriers to safe patient care

In my clinical experience, I have experienced many patient care concerns. One the

concern is on the hand hygiene of the nurses. It is a requirement for the nurses to embrace hand

hygiene as they deal with the patients. They should serve as role models to the public therefore;

they should be at the forefront of maintaining hand hygiene. However, it is not the case in many

healthcare facilities, as the nurses at times do not wear gloves while handling patients. There are

also those nurses who use the same gloves while handling more than one person. At times, they

claim the issue at hand was an emergency and there was no time to get other gloves or time to

wear hand gloves. Having clean hands while handling patients is another measure that should be

embraced to ensure there is hand hygiene among nurses. The barriers to safe patient care in these

scenarios is that handling the patients without sterilized gloves or with hand that are not clean

SYNTHESIS OF SAFETY

could lead to spread of infections which may lead to death of the patients. Nurses are exposed to

patients with various complications, which can be spread through contact. There is no need of

rushing to attend to a patient with a knee injury before cleaning hands then in the process, the

nurse transmits more infections to the nurses. In some cases, fatal diseases such as HIV/AIDS

are spread because of not engaging in proper hand hygiene. In my nursing experience, a nurse

contracted the HIV virus because of handling an infected patient without using sterilized gloves.

He found out of his status during the national AIDS day when we were all being tested. It was

because of his recklessness that he contracted the disease. If the nurse continues with poor hand

hygiene in the practice, he is likely to spread the disease to other patients.

QSEN quality and safety competencies

Quality and Safety Education for Nurses is important in ensuring the safety of the

patients. One QSEN competency is patient-centered care. The knowledge of this competency

about the hand hygiene issue is that it is necessary for the nurse to understand the legal and

ethical effects of patient-centered care (Defibaugh, 2018). If a nurse infects a patient with a

certain infection due to poor hand hygiene, it is possible for the patient to sue the health care

officer in a court. On skills, it is necessary for the nurse to access the extent of pain and suffering

of the patient if he or she infects the patient with an infection due to poor handling of the patient.

It is enough pain for the patient to have one sickness without adding a second one. Nurses,

therefore, need to be empathetic and see the consequences of their actions on the emotional being

of the patient. On attitudes, the nurses should be able to able to view the treatment process as the

patients see it. Before handling a patient without sterilized gloves, the nurse, therefore, should

ask him or herself whether the patient would be happy with it.

SYNTHESIS OF SAFETY

Articles on hand hygiene

Various articles expound on the relevance of the hand hygiene of the nurses. In this

essay, I will be analyzing three of those articles. The first article was published in 2013 titled

"Knowledge, attitudes and practices of hand hygiene among final year medical and nursing

students at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura." The study was carried out amongst the final

year studies from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura (Ariyarathne et. al., 2013). The results

showed that the students were well conversant with knowledge on proper hygiene but performed

poorly on the attitudes and the practices. It is a matter o concern in many health facilities not just

in my clinical setting. The second article was published in 2015 titled "Use of a Patient Hand

Hygiene Protocol to Reduce Hospital-Acquired Infections and Improve Nurses' Hand Washing

(Fox et. al., 2015)." The article is about a research project that was carried to show the

relationship between washing hands and the spread of infectious diseases among critically ill

patients. Improvement in the compliance of nurses in washing hands before attending to patients

in the Intensive Care Unit recorded a reduce in the spread of these infections. The third article

published in 2017 and titled "Impact of observing hand hygiene in practice and research: a

methodological reconsideration (Gould et. al., 2017)" emphasizes on the relationship between

increasing the efficiency of washing hands and the reduction of spread of infections. In addition,

when nurses know they are being watched, there is a likelihood of them maintaining hand

hygiene than when they are working behind closed curtains.

SYNTHESIS OF SAFETY

Preferred nursing practice

According to me, the best nursing practice for this concern is placing hand hygiene

products in appropriate places. Most of the nurses fail to use hand gloves because they are not

within reach. By placing such facilities at every point in the healthcare facility, it will ensure

safety for the patient is enhanced. There should also be dispensers next to the patients, which are

regularly filled. Soap should be available as water by itself is not enough to kill infections on the

hands. Washing of hands should be made a paramount issue in healthcare facilities for both the

nurses and the patients. There should therefore be campaigns and regular educative programs

within these institutions addressing the issue. The rationale for this approach is that both the

nurses and the patients can clean their hands after they are through with the treatment process.

Other methods such as having nurses on surveillance to ensure they follow the required

procedures may lead to de-motivation of the health workers. It is thus necessary to use

approaches that do not kill the work morale. The evidence that the nursing practice will work lies

on a survey conducted on nurses in the United States and Canada. More than half of the nurses

from both places agreed that they were likely to maintain hand hygiene if the materials were

available at their disposal (Kirk et al., 2016). The materials, in this case, are water, sterilized

gloves and soap.

Conclusion

It is therefore evident that nurses have a crucial role in ensuring the safety of the patient.

Administration of medication is not enough if it is done at the expense of the patient's health. It

is, therefore, necessary for nurses to ensure that they maintain hand hygiene while in the health

facilities. As seen in this report, it may not only affect the patients but can also affect the nurses

SYNTHESIS OF SAFETY

themselves. The nurses can also transmit the infections to the members of their families at home

when they make contact.

SYNTHESIS OF SAFETY

References

Ariyarathne, M., Gunasekara, T., Weerasekara, M., Kottahachchi, J., Kudavidanage, B., &

Fernando, S. (2013). Knowledge, attitudes, and practices of hand hygiene among final

year medical and nursing students at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Sri Lankan

Journal of Infectious Diseases, 3(1), 15.

Barron, D. (2010). Great nurses will provide great healthcare services. Nursing Standard, 24(52),

62-62.

Defibaugh, S. (2018). Erratum to: Nurse Practitioners and the Performance of Professional

Competency: Accomplishing Patient-centered Care. Nurse Practitioners and the

Performance of Professional Competency, E1-E1.

Fox, C., Wavra, T., Drake, D. A., Mulligan, D., Bennett, Y. P., Nelson, C., … Bader, M. K.

(2015). Use of a Patient Hand Hygiene Protocol to Reduce Hospital-Acquired Infections

and Improve Nurses' Hand Washing. American Journal of Critical Care, 24(3), 216-224.

Gould, D., Creedon, S., Jeanes, A., Drey, N., Chudleigh, J., & Moralejo, D. (2017). Impact of

observing hand hygiene in practice and research: a methodological reconsideration.

Journal of Hospital Infection, 95(2), 169-174.

Kirk, J., Kendall, A., Marx, J. F., Pincock, T., Young, E., Hughes, J. M., & Landers, T. (2016).

Point of care hand hygiene—where's the rub? A survey of US and Canadian healthcare

workers' knowledge, attitudes, and practices. American Journal of Infection Control,

44(10), 1095-1101.

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