This week I expected to learn more about Safety in nursing. Of course, improved safety means improved quality. I learned that Quality and Safety is a numbers game. My favorite quote of the week was, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it". This is so true! Somewhere in that hospital people are working hard with all the data about patient care, infections, falls, survey results, and other mishaps or improvements. They are filling charts, graphs, and number lines with all this information and filtering back results to departments on areas that need improvement. This is always a good thing. I can see why statistics was a prerequisite for this degree.
I always feel good about learning more to ensure my patients are safe. I don't ever want to be responsible for someone getting hurt or contracting an infection because of something that I did. I will take all that I learned this week and put it in the bigger picture. It is sometimes easy to just pay attention to the task at hand and not look at the big picture. For example, some may find it an annoyance to put on a gown, gloves and mask in a patient's room who is on contact precautions. They may feel that they will only be in there for a minute or they will wash their hands really good when they are done. However, if you see the big picture, you want to keep all your other patients safe. So, it is so very important to put on all that protection, not necessarily for you but for all the other patients you will come in contact with.
I will keep the big picture in mind. It isn't every job that someone has where they have to worry about causing harm to others or even death. What we do is too important. Constantly working to improve quality of care is essential.
No comments:
Post a Comment