Introduction
Nursing refer to the process of taking care of the patients which is done by a qualified and a certified nurse. It can be done either in the hospital ward, in the individual house or in an institution like of the disabled or the aged. It should be noted that the nurses are the people who closely work with patients. In most cases they encounter some close contact with patients meaning that they are very vulnerable to illnesses (Rick, 2006). Therefore, there is a great need to use improved technology while providing nursing care to ensure that the nursing practice does not pose any health risks to the nurses.
Providing Nursing Care in a Culture of Safety
The process of providing nursing care should be done in a culture of safety. The main aim of such a practice is to ensure that the infected do not transfer their infections to the healthy people. Therefore, the creation of a safe environment in any healthcare institute should not be a priority but part of the values of such an institute (Diane, 2006). Also, this is very important to emphasize a safety culture to ensure the environmental conditions in which the nurses are working are very favorable. There are other ways in which a safety culture in the process of providing nursing care can be achieved. The entire staff working in such environment should be very supportive as well as helpful to one another. This means that every nurse working in certain set up, should have the best interest of his or her work mate at heart. Each one of them should be in a position to offer moral support to her work mate where need be (Wendy, 2007). Also, they should be ready to assists each other like for example when they realize one of them is doing something in the wrong way, or even some thing that is possibly going to cause any problem then they should be ready to help. They should also be trustworthy to each other and very friendly. Team work should be emphasized in such an environment aiming at achieving creativity and good credibility.
Another important aspect in creating an environment in nursing profession with a safe culture is ensuring that the organization or the institute involved has beliefs that are aimed at achieving safety. For instance, learning approach in the organization helps in the process of installing safety culture to the patients. This is whereby there is a culture of systematically solving any problems using some empirical and scientific methods which have been tried and tested. There should be the use of new approach in experiments used to treat the patients. This means that the nurses can also try new and current experiments and be ready to learn from past experiences. This will help in avoiding to repeat any mistake that was once done in the past (Diane, 2006). There should be a culture of every institution to learn from the ever good existing practices in the past so as to improve their performance as far as offering services in the best safe way. Any new found, adopted or learnt method of providing a safe culture should be shared among the nurses to ensure that all of them are updated as far as the new technologies are concerned.
Good leadership is another important factor in ensuring that a safety nursing culture is achieved. This is because any new rule or law has to be implemented by the management of the institution. Therefore, there should be leaders whose passion is in providing a safe environment and people who are very flexible so that they can easily adopt any new emerging technology once it is at their disposal and when need be. This means that the leaders of such institute must be very well knowledgeable on the issues of nursing and the safe environment for such practices. These leaders too should be more focused on creating a good working environment and not issuing orders or authorities (Kay, 2005).
The use of better and improved technology can be one of the best ways in which a culture of safety can be achieved in a nursing working environment. This is because such innovations not only create a safe environment for the nurses but also for the patients. However, these new technologies must be user friendly so that they can improve the safety of a working environment. The use of a system to manage the work flow of a ward is one of the new technologies. This is a system which a nurse can use to monitor the situations of the ward. A good example is the use of a system that can collect a number of information from different sources in the ward. A nurse for instance can be able to trace the patients which are facing a risk on their health conditions (Kay, 2005). Also, the use of sensors installed at the bed side of the patients so as to be able to monitor their health. This technology enables the nurses to monitor the health of the patients whose conditions are very critical or even terminal. Such a technology can be used to monitor the health of the patients without necessarily having to go near the patient. A technology like that can be of help in a ward where the patients are suffering from communicable diseases or airborne diseases. This is very helpful to the nurses in that their safety can be very well catered for.
Another culture that must be practiced by the nurses to ensure a safe environment is the issue of observing the asepsis principles. This is a very good practice because it focuses on preventing the spread of any infection. This mainly, applies to every nurse where they are meant to do some things like cleaning hands after patient care and also before performing the act, eating, smoking as well as using the gloves (Diane, 2006). They should make sure that the technique of aseptic is well observed. This applies in procedure such as cleaning of wounds. Nurses need to be taught the scrubbing technique in surgery, which is a technique used in the theatre whereby the nurses are also involved.
Another very important aspect is educating the nurses on the safe ways of handling the patients depending on the illnesses they have because; different illnesses can pose different dangers. For instance, a patient with a communicable illness or an airborne disease can not be handled the same way as the one with a lifestyle or non- communicable disease. The nurses must be very well informed on the matter of safety as far as any disease is concerned (Wendy, 2007). They should be kept updated on the emerging issues like new strains of some diseases like tuberculosis of which could be hard to handle using the methods they are familiar with.
In my own personal point of view, I think technology is very important in the effort of providing a safe environment in a nursing practice. This is because; there are very many changes that are occurring in the medical world like the emergence of new strains of disease. Therefore, the use of a technology like the monitoring system is very important. Considering that the safety of the nurses and their patients as well as other patients is very important, then, the use of the new technologies to improve the safety of the nursing environment is very important.
Summary
The process of providing nursing care should therefore be done in a culture of safety. The main aim of such a practice is to ensure that the infected do not transfer their infections to the healthy people. So then the creation of a safe environment in any healthcare institute should not be a priority but part of the values of such an institute (Rick, 2006). This is very important to emphasize a safety culture to ensure the environmental conditions in which the nurses are working are very favorable. There is a need to use any available technology to achieve such.
References
Diane, H. (2006). Leadership and nursing care management. New York: W. H. Freeman.
Kay, K. (2005). Professional nursing: Concepts and challenges. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Rick, D (2006). Nursing fundamentals: Caring & clinical decisions making. New York: Free Press.
Wendy, L. (2007). Pediatric home care. New York: Amer. Assoc.