Medical Errors And Unsafe Care Harm - 1319 Words

Medical errors and unsafe care harm and kill thousands of Americans each year. Approximately two million healthcare-associated infections occur annually in the United States, accounting for an estimated 90,000 deaths and more than $4.5 billion in hospital healthcare costs (Patient Safety, 2015). Safety is one of the six competencies the QSEN faculty and National Advisory Board explained to be initiated in nursing pre-licensure programs in order to increase the quality and safety of healthcare systems. Safety in healthcare decreases risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performance. The integration of safety in healthcare, which is important for future nurses to utilize in practice, can be†¦show more content†¦With clinical expertise, a nurse can identify gaps in care that would result in critical patient outcomes and fix the gaps in time. Nurses are accountable for speaking up for patients in situations when safety issues ar ise. For example, when there is a breach in sterilization and a nurse notices the breach, the nurse is accountable to bring awareness of the breach to the staff no matter who is responsible or what the nurse who notices the breaches position or seniority may be. If a medical error hurts a patient, then the involved organization and nurse is accountable and needs to take responsibility. â€Å"Providing education about participating in crucial conversations and reviewing culture principles could improve a team’s ability to speak up and be accountable† (BattiÉ, Steelman, 2014). Being accountable and taking responsibility means informing the patient of the error and damage it caused, apologizing and providing care for the injury or illness, performing a root cause analysis of the error, and learning from the analysis by keeping the error from occurring again. A root cause analysis needs to be done after the error occurs. All staff associated in the error must particip ate in the analysis in order to keep speculation from happening that will cover up the facts. The goal of the analysis is not to blame an individual for the error, but rather to make changes to keep the error from happening again. Nurses are the most trusted