Addressing Never Events: The Perspective of a Progressive Care Nurse

Introduction

The so-called “Never Events,” which are defined as instances of critical mistakes being made in a healthcare setting, must be prevented to ensure that patients’ health needs are managed adequately. For this reason, revisiting the roles of a progressive care nurse (PCN) in a healthcare context is needed. By focusing on communication and effective data management, a PCN will be able to reduce the risks of a Never Event taking place.

Discussion

For a PCN, supporting the organization’s strategic agenda in relation to improving clinical outcomes implies ensuring that the transition from one department or hospital to another occurs as seamless for the patient as possible, with a reduced exposure to threats. Specifically, a PCN must resolve the problem of medical errors taking place as a direct result of patient’s data mismanagement during the patient transfer form one department or facility to another (Rodziewicz et al., 2018). Therefore, the role of a PCN in the specified context involves active nurse-patient communication to avoid information mismanagement. The outlined role of a PCN leads to generating useful information and improving quality of care to a notable extent.

Additionally, a PCN’s role should include encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration and communication across departments and healthcare organizations should also be mentioned. The focus on collaboration and dialogue in the clinical setting as a responsibility of a PCN contributes to supporting the healthcare organization’s strategic agenda since it helps avoid errors that entail additional expense and reduce the quality of patient outcome. As a result, a PCN’s performance contributes to promoting value-based payment and purchasing (Rodziewicz et al., 2018). Furthermore, the described responsibility causes a nurse to empower the consumer to participate in decision-making due to the improved nurse-patient dialogue and the emphasis on patient agency as one of the core standards. The described changes entail a rise in the quality of care and the efficacy of patient data management, which, in turn, reflects a connection between the organization’s strategic agenda and improved clinical outcomes.

Examining the notion of a Never Event as it pertains to the context of the trauma unit and the respiratory unit, as well as the role of a PCN in the specified settings, one will have to promote closer focus on medical error prevention. Namely, to ensure that the healthcare organization’s strategic agenda aligns with the focus on patient outcome improvement, a PCN must introduce collaboration and cross-disciplinary communication, as well as the principles of multiculturalism. The specified approach will contribute to a drop in the instances of information mismanagement and misrepresentation of facts, as well as loss of critical data, which, in turn, will help prevent medical errors. Among the latter, issues regarding the failure to administer appropriate treatments to the trauma unit patients or inpatients suffering from respiratory issues deserve to be mentioned. Furthermore, in the trauma unit, the risks of failing o implement a proper patient transfer will be prevented from taking place. Indeed, according to Rodziewicz et al. (2022), the specified concern is quite common for the respiratory unit setting: “Errors of omission occur as a result of actions not taken. Examples are not strapping a patient into a wheelchair or not stabilizing a gurney prior to patient transfer” (para. 10). In turn, by implementing their core responsibilities of ensuring quality communication, PCNs will contribute to voiding the described occurrences.

Conclusion

Integrating tools for effective communication management and data analysis and transfer, a POCN will be able to reduce the risks of Never Events. Moreover, the introduction of approaches for aligning the organization’s agenda with the focus on improved patient outcomes will help address the described issue. With a strong ethical framework and affective communication strategies, a healthcare service will address core public health issues thoroughly.

References

Rodziewicz, T. L., Houseman, B., & Hipskind, J. E. (2018). Medical error reduction and prevention. National Institute of Health. Web.