Fast Facts for Patient Safety in Nursing

This book highlights the alarming statistics regarding medical errors and the most common causes. A thorough review of the literature identified the most significant errors and their causes. The significance of critical thinking, logic, and clinical judgment has been well established, and the book includes strategies for developing and improving these skills. It addresses case studies, exemplars, tips from the field, discussion questions, and special topics that support the integration and application of the important concepts. The book is structured and organized around two major units. Unit I addresses the severity of the issue and common causes. It provides an overview of the issue and the agencies that focus on patient safety. Despite numerous policy changes and strategies, patient errors have continued to increase after a previous improvement that stemmed from the initiatives after the landmark report To Err Is Human. Common medical errors include medication errors, patient falls, pressure ulcers, infections, and surgical errors. Unit I also describes the primary causes with poor communication being one of the most common causes. Unit II focuses on improving patient safety and decreasing adverse events. It focuses on ways to become a safe practitioner through education and competency development. It also highlights several theories that can be used to promote quality of care and decrease adverse outcomes. It then focuses on the significance of critical thinking in promoting patient outcomes and ways to develop and improve critical thinking and reasoning. The book focuses on prioritization and delegation and ways to develop these skills in addition to the scope of practice, intuition, and ethics. It focuses on leadership and emotional intelligence and finally focuses on the issue from a holistic approach and includes cultural humility and artificial intelligence.