The report by Committee on the Work Environment for Nurses and Patient Safety (2004) that is now called the Health and Medicine Division proposes the importance of nurse working conditions as a premise for patient safety.
Based on a series of national surveys, the report identifies specific guidelines for enhancing patient safety by focusing on prevention of health care errors. The activities performed by nurses such as patient education, monitoring, treatment, and so on present a rather significant source of the identification of errors. According to the mentioned report, the principles of transformational leadership and evidence-based management are to compose the core of patient safety provision.
Reviewing the key points of the document, one may note that it aligns well with the contemporary needs of nursing. As noted by Laschinger (2014), nursing workplace plays an integral role in mitigating errors and creating a robust culture of safety. With this in mind, the report reveals not only potential options for the improvement, but also the key causes of high rates of health care errors in the US. Among the most widespread ones, there are the lack of workplace equipment and staff awareness of the problem.
The fact that it is a nurse who is considered to be blame for errors instead of an organization also leads to the inadequate patient safety. Thus, the reconsideration of the organization of health care institutions with the focus on nurse workplace is the main proposed option of the mentioned report. Taking into account that it involves credible sources of information, provides statistics, and specifies feasible strategies on the situation enhancement, the role of this report cannot be overestimated in an attempt to promote the national effort on preventing health care errors and ensuring patient safety.
References
Committee on the Work Environment for Nurses and Patient Safety. (2004). Keeping patients safe: Transforming the work environment of nurses. Washington, D.C.: The National Academic Press.
Laschinger, H. K. S. (2014). Impact of workplace mistreatment on patient safety risk and nurse-assessed patient outcomes. Journal of Nursing Administration, 44(5), 284-290.