PostHeaderIcon Exploring the Issue of Patient Safety in Hospitals and Care Homes

Patient care is an issue which frequently arises across the world and it will continue to do so as more regulations arise to help ensure improved levels of patient safety. Hospitals and care homes are filled with potentially vulnerable individuals and nurses and care providers have an extremely important, yet undeniably difficult, role to play in guaranteeing the safety of the patients they are charged with looking after.

The profession of nursing is highly pressurised and these care givers have a lot of responsibility placed firmly on their shoulders to provide a level of care to our loved ones when they are in hospital or a care home facility. As it is such a crucial position to fill and people’s lives will often, literally, depend on the quality of care that they will receive it is important to look at the issue of patient safety and what measures can be put in place to help facilitate it.

A Helping Hand

In order to achieve the levels of patient safety that society demands of its hospitals and care homes, regulated systems and processes need to be established that will facilitate this through the reduction of errors amongst nursing staff and the use of technology that helps prevent emergencies before they arise – such as nurse call systems. Anything which has the capability to enhance patient safety records needs to be seriously considered as a must amongst health care facilities and nurse call systems are certainly a piece of apparatus that falls into this bracket.

The fast paced nature of hospitals and care homes where time is often of the essence and nursing and care providers need to act quickly to situations, technology which gives them as much forewarning as possible is extremely important. It is, of course, apparent that technology is improving all the time as advancements are made and an example of this can be witnessed by the fact that the vast majority of nurse call systems used in healthcare facilities are now wireless and allow for multi-zonal monitoring of patients – a advancement which has helped make the workload of nurses more streamlined.

Nurses need to be vigilant of all the risks that their patients may potentially face and do all they can to eliminate these risks and respond during times of emergency. As mentioned, the vulnerability of patients in hospitals and care homes (illness, old age etc) means that they need to rely on the expertise and skills of nurses and whilst the responsibility of this vast, it is also a highly rewarding profession as you are helping keep people safe and looking after them in a time of need.

 

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