Nurses Week 2016
Thursday, May 5, 2016
National Nurses Week begin each year on May 6th and ends on May 12th,
Florence Nightingale's birthday. Although there is no coincidence that
Nurses Week starts the day after Cinco de Mayo, it should be a week to recognize the quality care that these medical professionals dedicate their lives to.
American Nurses Association kicked off a yearlong campaign this year:
Safety 360 Taking Responsibility Together. A culture of safety refers to the core values and behaviors of managers, workers, and patients. Attributes of a positive safety culture include:
- Openness and mutual trust when discussing safety concerns and solutions without individual blame.
- Marshaling of appropriate resources, such as safe staffing and skill.
- A learning environment in which health care professionals learn from errors and proactively detect systemic weaknesses.
- Transparency and accountability.
National Staffing Solutions reached out to get insight from our
nurses, who are staffed across the nation, about ways they can individually and collectively work toward creating a culture of safety in their workplaces.
Alex M. | Pediatric Travel Nurse | @fitgypsywife
- How can you create a culture of safety for all nurses, your patients, and yourself?
I think the best advice I have for creating a culture of safety is to not be afraid to speak up. Whether it's speaking up when you see something unsafe, to communicate a specific patient need or concern, or to voice that something makes you uncomfortable. Communication is such an important aspect of health care and as nurses we have to know when to break the silence when we see a need for change or reevaluation.
- As a traveler, you deal with different people and environments every 13 weeks or so. Do you see an opportunity to spread this message to other nurses?
Especially as a traveler, I've learned that you may have something educational to share that you picked up from another facility. You can learn something valuable to put into practice elsewhere.
- Can you give an example of a situation where you applied what you learned from an assignment to your next one?
So my first job was at St. Jude affiliate hospital so we had
a lot of chemo patients. Most of them had the bigger procedures such as bone
marrow transplants, chemo induction, etc. This was at the main campus in
Memphis, but they would come to us if they got sick between trips or needed
more routine treatments.
I was caring for a patient who had been undergoing treatment
for several years and needed a routine blood transfusion. While checking off
the unit of blood, the patient spoke up and told us we had the wrong blood type
documented. I was confused because they had been in and out of our hospital so
frequently. It just so happened that they took a trip to Memphis and undergone
a bone marrow transplant that resulted in a new blood type (I didn't even know
that was possible at the time).
The timing was just perfect that her type and cross were not
quite expired. Had we not gone through the proper channels, checked AND
rechecked the blood as protocol requires, we would have transfused what we thought
was the proper unit. There could have been detrimental results. This situation
was proof that computer double checks are not always fool proof. It’s something
I will always keep in mind when transfusing now. Needless to say, some
hospitals are not cancer centers. So it is definitely an experience that I can use
to educate coworkers.
Kristina | ICU Travel Nurse
- What is your Nursing specialty?
My name is Kristina and my specialty is in the
Intensive Care Unit (ICU), caring for critical ill patients.
- How long have you worked with National Staffing Solutions?
I have worked with National Staffing Solutions since
July 2015 and have worked in Denver Colorado, St. Petersburg Florida and in Brattleboro
Vermont.
- What's your idea towards creating a "Culture of Safety"?
Working towards creating a culture of safety for both
patients and nurses starts with appropriate nurse staffing. Ensuring proper staffing decreases nurse
fatigue, therefore decreasing preventable errors and increasing patient safety
and satisfaction. Creating a flexible
staffing system that is determined by the acuity of patients and their needs,
rather than on the number of total patients, is one way that we, as nurses, can
collectively work together to help create a culture of safety for not only our
patients but for ourselves as well.
If you would like to share your ideas for creating a Culture of Safety with us, please email
Marketing@NationalStaff.com.
We are a nationwide health care staffing agency for Physical Therapy,
Occupational Therapy, Speech-Language Pathology, Nursing, and Advanced
Practice. Please submit your info to our home page if you would like to speak
with one of our knowledgeable recruiters about available jobs in your desired location.
Leanne Leuterio
5/5/2016
Add your comments:
Items in bold indicate required information.