Introduction
Patient safety is a medical discipline that has emerged in response to the growing complexity of providing health services, which is accompanied by an increase in the scale of harm caused to patients in medical institutions. The task of this discipline is to prevent and reduce the level of risk, the number of errors, and the extent of the process of providing medical care. The cornerstone of this discipline is the continuous improvement of practice based on learning from mistakes and undesirable phenomena.
For the successful implementation of measures to ensure patient safety, clear instructions, managerial capacity, well-trained specialists, and assistance to the active participation of patients in the process of providing them with medical care are needed. Nowadays, a nurse in the United States is positioned as a doctor’s partner. A nurse is constantly in contact with the patient, meets all his needs, responds in a timely manner to the deterioration of his physiological and psychological well-being, and builds relationships with relatives of patients.
Patient Safety Importance
Well-developed healthcare systems should be able to consider the growing complexity of the medical care process, which increases the importance of the human factor and the risk of making mistakes. For example, a hospitalized patient may be given the wrong medicine due to an error caused by a similar package appearance. In this case, the prescription for the release of the drug goes through several stages, from the attending physician to the hospital pharmacy and the nurse who gave the patient the wrong medicine. If there were control and verification procedures at each location, such an error would be promptly identified and corrected (Hanson et al., 2020). Thus, the first step in improving patient safety should be to analyze the properties of the system that made it possible to cause harm, but this requires openness and transparency.
The EBP Model Definition
Medical professionals need various types of information to answer constantly emerging questions. For example, students or interns often need basic information that explains the causes and pathogenesis of the disease and physiological features. The EBP (evidence-based practice) is a way of problem-solving when making clinical decisions in a medical organization. The EBP model is It can be taken from textbooks, reference books, and other general sources. The EBP system is a strategy for adding production and personnel, finance, and asset management, aimed at optimizing the organization’s resources.
The medical EBP system creates an integrated online database, which receives information in real-time (Shuman et al., 2018). At the same time, the costs of automating processes are reduced since the system keeps records of patients, drug stocks, and their purchases. EBP platform providers offer installation on the client’s equipment and in relation to a cloud service. In the first case, one or more databases are created, and the organization owns them on the local network. In the second case, the applications are located in a shared database in split mode.
An Ideal Source Description
Nowadays, healthcare professionals in all countries need to obtain new, clinically significant evidence to ensure effective and high-quality management of their patients. Since 1970, the number of medical journals published has doubled, and the amount of available data continues to grow every day. To understand whether the resource is reliable, first, you need to determine the date. A reliable source should not be older than five years. Next, you need to select the author of the publication and determine if he is a specialist in your chosen field. Moreover, it is important to find out the purpose of the published article and its target audience.
Thus, an ideal source of information should contain high-quality data, be applicable in clinical practice, contain data on all the benefits and harms of all interventions and drugs, and be convenient to use. Deciding how to use the results of a study or recommendations in a particular case is one of the most difficult steps requiring both a doctor’s knowledge and experience (Stahmer et al., 2018). At this stage, the doctor weighs the ratio of the benefits of treatment and the risk of adverse reactions and chooses in favor of the therapy method or drug.
The EBP in Nursing
Traditionally, the work of nurses in clinics is based on patient data or personal experience and knowledge that they received in medical schools, at training programs and conferences. In addition, nurses use clinical recommendations and guidelines for therapeutic manipulations, recommendations of doctors, intuition and traditional practice, and much less on evidence-based data from special scientific journals. The general trend was subordination to “authoritative sources,” which were sources of specialized literature, opinions of experts, teachers of medical schools, and traditional practice. One of the EBP models is the John Hopkins model (Skela-Savič et al., 2020).
First of all, this model helps predict the deterioration of the disease, thereby improving treatment and patient safety. Nurses who work in clinics and reinforce their practical skills with scientifically proven data, rather than information from conventional sources, can independently report to their patients and society. Moreover, they can earn and maintain trust among other medical disciplines and form professional nursing knowledge that can be used to influence treatment strategy and management.
Conclusion
By way of conclusion, the algorithm is simple, but evidence-based medicine does not offer easy ways. The paper investigated the importance of ensuring patient safety. It was found that the EBP system significantly helps doctors in this area. That is why it is a complex but extremely effective tool. Hospitals can use it and provide patients with high-quality medical care. The EBP system should be actively implemented in medical organizations. For example, to provide nurses with additional time to study the material, teach electronic search, and discuss medical journal articles.
References
Hanson, J., Walsh, S., Mason, M., Wadsworth, D., Framp, A., & Watson, K. (2020). ‘Speaking up for Safety’: A Graded Assertiveness Intervention for First Year Nursing Students in Preparation for Clinical Placement: Thematic Analysis. Nurse Education Today, 84, 104252. Web.
Shuman, C. J., Ploutz-Snyder, R. J., & Titler, M. G. (2018). Development and Testing of the Nurse Manager EBP Competency Scale. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 40(2), 175-190. Web.
Skela-Savič, B., Gotlib, J., Panczyk, M., Patelarou, A. E., Bole, U., Ramos-Morcillo, A. J.,… & Ruzafa-Martínez, M. (2020). Teaching Evidence-based Practice (EBP) in nursing Curricula in Six European Countries—A Descriptive Study. Nurse Education Today, 94, 104561. Web.
Stahmer, A. C., Suhrheinrich, J., Schetter, P. L., & Hassrick, E. M. (2018). Exploring Multi-level System Factors Facilitating Educator Training and Implementation of Evidence-based Practices (EBP): a Study Protocol. Implementation Science, 13(1), 1-11. Web.