Safety and Infection Control in Professional Nursing Practice Essay

Safety and Infection Control in Professional Nursing Practice Essay

Safety and Infection Control in Professional Nursing Practice Essay

Healthcare organizations should be safe places for patients and health practitioners. Accordingly, health care providers should implement adequate measures for protecting patients from injuries. After the individual performance on the comprehensive assessments, safety and infection control emerged as the priority concept (topic). It falls under the safe and effective care environment categories of the NCLEX-RN examination blueprint. Regarding the relationship, healthcare organizations cannot assure patients of a safe and effective care environment without guaranteeing patient safety and controlling infections. In this case, the practice environment must be free from hazards to provide safe and effective care. The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between a safe and effective care environment, safety and infection control, and professional practice.

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Importance of Safety and Infection Control

Patients and healthcare practitioners need adequate protection from workplace hazards. Safety and control practices insinuate a nurse’s commitment to protecting clients and health care personnel from health and environmental hazards (NCSBN, 2019). Safety and infection control is important to professional practice since nurses and organizational leaders have a moral and professional duty to prevent hospital-acquired infections and injuries, among other adverse effects of unsafe practice. The health practice should also be patient-centered, prioritizing people’s health. As a result, safety and infection control is crucial to the health status of a patient population since it breaks the infection chain. It reduces infection rates as a proactive intervention for disease control and management.

Failure to resolve safety and infection control implies overlooking a critical area that significantly impacts professional practice and patient outcomes. It is akin to failing to grow and develop as a professional and not acquiring the right skills to address patient concerns. From a practice dimension, patient safety should be a priority, and infections should be controlled as much as possible. To achieve this, nurses and other healthcare personnel must promote a healthcare environment free from hazards. The relationship between providers and the patient population is likely to be adversely affected if health care personnel do not adequately protect patients from harm. Patient falls, injuries and death are typical in unsafe care environments (Najafpour et al., 2019). Hence, resolving the issue is crucial through progressive skills development and other strategies.

Healthcare Disparities, Inequalities, and Interventions

Unsafe healthcare environments or inadequate skills to provide safe care and control infections are a risk to all patient populations. All patients deserve safe and quality care. Despite this general concern, elderly patients are a high-risk population due to their vulnerability to falls (Jin, 2018). The other critical patient population includes those requiring high hygiene levels, such as patients with urinary tract infections. They are at risk of catheter-associated infections and other problems associated with unsafe care. Healthcare resources to support evidence-based professional practice related to safety and infection control include research materials, mentors, and healthcare technologies. Research can help to improve individual knowledge, while mentorship is essential in guiding healthcare personnel about safe practice. Healthcare technologies can help to improve disease detection, diagnosis, and patient monitoring.

Healthcare disparities and inequalities are a real problem hampering health outcomes in diverse populations. Disparities and inequalities related to safety and infection control include inadequate access to health care, gaps in exposure to environmental threats, and unequal access to technology. Rural areas have low access to technology which hampers their access to health information and communication with providers (Fong et al., 2020). There is no universal approach for healthcare disparities and inequalities related to safety and infection control. However, patient and nursing advocacy can effectively improve outcomes. Advocacy involves raising a voice on behalf of others. It is a practical intervention to ensure healthcare facilities are adequately resourced to provide safe care and control infections.

Interventions vary depending on the gravity of a problem and the same applies to safety and infection control. Incident reporting, safe use of equipment and health education are suitable evidence-based interventions. According to Paradiso and Sweeny (2019), reporting safety incidents like medication errors is the foundation of just culture in healthcare. The entire healthcare personnel should embrace timely reporting to facilitate quick responses and learn from their mistakes. Safe use of equipment should be a priority too. Nurses should inspect equipment for safety hazards and remove malfunctioning equipment from patient care area (NCSBN, 2019). Health education can help to improve nurses’ skills on handling hazardous and infectious materials and implementing standard precautions. When prioritized, education, safe use of equipment, an incident reporting should follow each other in that order. Education develops skills and can help a nurse to implement the other interventions effectively. Patient education considerations related to safety and infection control include education levels and access to technology. Each factor determines the resources used for patient education, learning strategies, and the length of a program.

Legal and Ethical Considerations and Intervention Challenges

Ethical dilemmas and legal issues are common in routine care. Regarding ethical implications, addressing safety and infection control concerns will reduce harm, as biomedical ethics recommends. Reducing harm through infection control aligns with the non-maleficence principle (Varkey, 2021). Compliance shields an organization from ethical issues that can lead to costly legal accusations, particularly when a patient is harmed. To prevent ethical dilemmas, health care personnel should adhere to the accepted safety conduct and consult experienced professionals and leaders when unsure of the best procedure. Adherence can also help to prevent legal consequences in professional practice. An anticipated challenge includes adopting an organization-wide strategy to prevent safety problems and infections. A challenge possible after resolving the problem would be sustainability. It is crucial to ensure that the interventions applied to achieve a safe and effective care environment will have a lasting effect.

Participants and Interdisciplinary Approach

Creating safe and effective care environments requires a collaborative approach. As Carrico et al. (2018) accentuated, leadership support is crucial to promoting safe and effective infection control practices. As a result, organizational management and health care leaders should be centrally involved in safety enhancement and infection control practices. Other parties include health educators facilitating health education and health care personnel implementing safety practices. Appropriate members of a discipline outside nursing include a legal advisor on health matters and a social worker. The legal advisor is crucial for ensuring compliance with ethical and legal standards, while the social worker would provide insight into environmental hazards and other dangers in the community. Kivits et al. (2019) recommended using an interdisciplinary approach in nursing and public health since an issue is addressed multi-dimensionally. Similarly, the interdisciplinary members outside nursing are vital to ensuring that multiple perspectives are incorporated into the decision-making process.

 

Quality Improvement

Safe and effective care environments improve patient outcomes profoundly. Henderson et al. (2021) found that infection prevention practices reduce health-associated infections (HAIs) in health facilities. This implies that health care costs, patient mortality rates, and hospital stays reduce significantly. To the nursing profession, addressing safety and infection control will improve nurses’ preparedness to deal with hazards and ensure a reliable pool of professionals for providing ethical, safe, and quality care. Health care technology is a common resource used to promote patient outcomes in the clinical environment. It improves accuracy and makes processes more efficient. Educational resources are utilized to increase professional nurse knowledge to enable them achieve better outcomes. Training/education ensures nurses apply innovative interventions (Silva et al., 2018). Generally, resources vary across healthcare institutions.

Conclusion

Healthcare organizations should be free from safety hazards and other dangers that hamper patient safety. As discussed in this paper, safety and infection control practices are critical to promoting safe and effective care. Hence, nurses with inadequate skills in safety and infection control should continuously improve their knowledge through continuous learning, research, mentorship, and other strategies. Evidence-based research articles by Carrico et al. (2018), Henderson et al. (2021), and Silva et al. (2018) are valuable resources for nurses to improve safety and infection control skills. They describe how leaders and healthcare professionals can work together to promote innovation in infection control. Overall, addressing the priority concept (safety and infection control) is critical to optimizing patient outcomes. It is an effective strategy for preventing hospital-acquired infections and adverse health outcomes.

References

Carrico, R. M., Garrett, H., Balcom, D., & Glowicz, J. B. (2018). Infection prevention and control core practices: A roadmap for nursing practice. Nursing, 48(8), 28-29. https://doi.org/10.1097%2F01.NURSE.0000544318.36012.b2

Fong, B., Fong, A. C. M., & Li, C. K. (2020). Telemedicine technologies: Information technologies in medicine and digital health. John Wiley & Sons.

Henderson, J., Willis, E., Blackman, I., Verrall, C., & McNeill, L. (2021). Comparing infection control and ward nurses’ views of the omission of infection control activities using the Missed Nursing Care Infection Prevention and Control (MNCIPC) Survey. Journal of Nursing Management, 29(5), 1228-1238. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.13261

Jin, J. (2018). Prevention of falls in older adults. Jama, 319(16), 1734-1734. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.4396

Kivits, J., Ricci, L., & Minary, L. (2019). Interdisciplinary research in public health: The ‘why’and the ‘how’. J Epidemiol Community Health, 73(12), 1061-1062. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2019-212511

NCSBN. (2019). NCLEX-RN Examination. https://www.nclex.com/2019_RN_TestPlan-English.pdf

Najafpour, Z., Godarzi, Z., Arab, M., & Yaseri, M. (2019). Risk factors for falls in hospital in-patients: A prospective nested case control study. International Journal of Health Policy And Management, 8(5), 300–306. https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2019.11

Paradiso, L., & Sweeney, N. (2019). Just culture: It’s more than policy. Nursing Management, 50(6), 38-45. doi: 10.1097/01.NUMA.0000558482.07815.ae

Silva, A. M. B. D., Bim, L. L., Bim, F. L., Sousa, A. F. L., Domingues, P. C. A., Nicolussi, A. C., & Andrade, D. D. (2018). Patient safety and infection control: bases for curricular integration. Revista Brasileira De Enfermagem, 71, 1170-1177. https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7167-2017-0314

Varkey, B. (2021). Principles of clinical ethics and their application to practice. Medical Principles and Practice, 30(1), 17-28. https://doi.org/10.1159/000509119

 

In this paper the student will provide a detailed description of the relationship between the category from the NCLEX-RN examination blueprint, the priority concept (topic) selected based on assessment performance, and professional practice.
1) Write a 4-6 page paper (not including the title page or reference page) using APA format
2) Include the following sections:
a. Introduction- 20 points/8%
• Offer a detailed description of the purpose statement for the paper.
• Identify the priority concept (topic) from the Individual Student Comprehensive Assessment Trends: Longitudinal Performance Table drawn from one (1) of the four (4) main categories of the NCLEX-RN examination blueprint:
 Assurance of a safe and effective care environment
 Health promotion and maintenance of health
 Preservation of the patient population’s psychosocial integrity
 Preservation of the patient population’s physiological integrity
• Provide a detailed description of the relationship between the category from the NCLEX-RN examination blueprint and the priority concept (topic).
b. Importance – 20 points/8%
• Describe the importance of the priority concept (topic) to professional practice.
• Describe the importance of the priority concept (topic) to the health status of a patient population.
• Include the potential negative effect(s) to professional practice if the priority concept (topic) is unresolved.
• Include the potential negative effect(s) to the patient population if the priority concept (topic) is unresolved.
c. Healthcare Disparities, Inequalities, and Interventions- 70 points/28%
• Identify patient populations that may be negatively influenced by the priority concept (topic) if unresolved.
• Identify healthcare resources to support evidence-based professional practice related to the priority concept (topic).
• Summarize potential priority concept (topic) healthcare disparities and inequalities related to diverse populations.
• Propose an evidence-based solution for the priority concept (topic) related to healthcare disparities.
• Identify three (3) evidence-based practice interventions.
• Prioritize the identified evidence-based practice interventions and provide rationale.
• Discuss two (2) patient education considerations related to the priority concept (topic).
d. Legal & Ethical Considerations and Intervention Challenges- 40 points/16%
• Identify at least one (1) ethical and one (1) legal implication for addressing the priority concept (topic) in professional practice.
• Discuss at least one (1) strategy in prevention of an ethical dilemma related to the priority concept (topic) in professional practice.
• Discuss at least one (1) strategy in prevention of legal consequences related to the priority concept (topic) in professional practice.
• Identify one (1) anticipated challenge to the success of preventing the priority concept (topic) in professional practice.
• Identify one (1) anticipated challenge to the success of resolving the priority concept (topic) in professional practice.
e. Participants and Interdisciplinary Approach – 20 points/8%
• Identify all the parties who will be involved in the implementation of the priority concept (topic) interventions.
• Discuss the role of each member in the intervention implementation for the priority concept (topic).
• Identify a minimum of two (2) members of a discipline outside of nursing.
• Discuss the benefit of including the identified interdisciplinary members from disciplines outside nursing to promote evidence-based professional practice.
f. Quality Improvement– 20 points/8%
• Provide at least one (1) benefit in patient outcomes from addressing the priority concept (topic) within the clinical environment.
• Provide at least one (1) benefit to the nursing profession that will result from addressing this priority concept (topic) in clinical professional practice.
• Discuss at least one (1) resource utilized to promote improved patient outcomes in the clinical environment.
• Discuss at least one (1) resource utilized to increase professional nurse knowledge promoting improved clinical professional practice.
g. Conclusion – 20 points/8%
• Provide a thorough recap of the purpose to promote increased evidence-based professional practice knowledge related to the priority concept (topic) deficiency.
• Summarize resources identified to support improved evidence-based professional practice related to the priority concept (topic).
• Include a complete statement describing why addressing the priority concept (topic) matters for patient outcomes and evidence-based professional practice.
h. APA Style and Organization– 20 points/8%
• References are submitted with paper.
• Uses current APA format and is free of errors.
• Grammar and mechanics are free of errors.
• At least three (3) scholarly, peer reviewed, primary sources from the last 5 years, excluding the textbook, are provided. Each section should have a cited source to support information provided.