The purpose of this paper is to look at high quality, accountable care in medical communities and the high priority placed on increasing quality and safety among patients who suffer from preventable medical errors each year. “Medical errors kill enough people to fill four jumbo jets a week”. (WSJ. Makary) Thus the skills, knowledge and attitudes of nurses must be used to drive and sustain culture changes around patient and family centered care is driving medical process and procedure changes to increase the quality of care.
Stories from families like Lewis Blackman who lost a son due to medical error and organizations such as the AHRQ, IPFCC, and h2Pi are alerting the medical profession that there is a need to evaluate practices, system-level …show more content…
We find a multitude of system communications breakdown and key knowledge issues but even more than that the seemingly insular attitude on the part of the nurses is a key dynamic behind the facts. First of all, Lewis Blackman was placed on a non-surgical ward. This is where it seems the nurses misunderstood his symptoms of pain, the meaning of dark circles, bloating, sweating, reduced temperature, and being extremely pale as problems related to routine post surgical issues. Furthermore, the staff failed to see the symptoms of an acute abdomen and react emergently. In addition, nurses neglected to arc up the mother’s concern to the attending physician. As healthcare professionals, we must stand ready to rule out symptoms as they present themselves. We must not label patient complaints as “lazy” or any other name that serves as a wedge to acting upon the patient and family observations. Importantly, nurses need not take questions from families as personal affronts. Nurses need to develop greater alignment with the family as a partner this provides a paradigm shift in the actuation of the QSEN, KSA …show more content…
Even at the end, nurses didn’t seem to comprehend that when Lewis’ suddenly had no pain, death was imminent. The KSA’s of nurses played in integral role in Lewis’ fate. From a KSA point of view, the lack of knowledge is apparent, skills were not used because of deficits in competency. Attitude played the most important role in Lewis’ poor outcome. If only one nurse had insisted on providing patient and family centered care, a confident nurse may have called an attending valuing his mother’s concerns, and Lewis may have lived. A competent nurse with the right knowledge might have taken
Stories from families like Lewis Blackman who lost a son due to medical error and organizations such as the AHRQ, IPFCC, and h2Pi are alerting the medical profession that there is a need to evaluate practices, system-level …show more content…
We find a multitude of system communications breakdown and key knowledge issues but even more than that the seemingly insular attitude on the part of the nurses is a key dynamic behind the facts. First of all, Lewis Blackman was placed on a non-surgical ward. This is where it seems the nurses misunderstood his symptoms of pain, the meaning of dark circles, bloating, sweating, reduced temperature, and being extremely pale as problems related to routine post surgical issues. Furthermore, the staff failed to see the symptoms of an acute abdomen and react emergently. In addition, nurses neglected to arc up the mother’s concern to the attending physician. As healthcare professionals, we must stand ready to rule out symptoms as they present themselves. We must not label patient complaints as “lazy” or any other name that serves as a wedge to acting upon the patient and family observations. Importantly, nurses need not take questions from families as personal affronts. Nurses need to develop greater alignment with the family as a partner this provides a paradigm shift in the actuation of the QSEN, KSA …show more content…
Even at the end, nurses didn’t seem to comprehend that when Lewis’ suddenly had no pain, death was imminent. The KSA’s of nurses played in integral role in Lewis’ fate. From a KSA point of view, the lack of knowledge is apparent, skills were not used because of deficits in competency. Attitude played the most important role in Lewis’ poor outcome. If only one nurse had insisted on providing patient and family centered care, a confident nurse may have called an attending valuing his mother’s concerns, and Lewis may have lived. A competent nurse with the right knowledge might have taken