The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines the science of safety as an emerging discipline that aims to understand and prevent adverse events. Notably, the concept does not have a common meaning in various healthcare disciplines; instead, each professional approaches it through the lens of their own specialization. For example, clinicians perceive the science of safety as the identification and prevention of adverse drug events in practice settings. In professional nursing practice, the concept is used to emphasize patient safety within the complex healthcare environment.
Institutional systemic factors affect nurses’ adherence to and compliance with specific patient-safety principles, such as the organizational patient-safety climate, time pressure and workloads, levels of ward performance, and communication between patients and healthcare staff (Vaismoradi et al., 2020). In addition, nurses’ adherence to patient-safety principles is implemented through personal motivation, resistance to change, attitudes toward innovation, the feeling of autonomy, empowerment, and other personal factors.
Because the application of the science of safety is quite universal within the healthcare practice, the concept could be aligned with several theories of nursing. For instance, in Henderson’s Nursing Need Theory, the emphasis is placed on the importance of increasing patients’ independence to facilitate their progress. Important patient-safety principles must be met when nurses apply the theory into practice, such as ensuring the organizational patient-safety climate conducive to recovery.
Another example is Peplau’s Theory of Interpersonal Relations, which focuses on the importance of the nurse-client relationship as the foundation of nursing practice. Patient safety is directly linked to the effectiveness of the communication that occurs between nurses and their patients – the more understanding there is between the parties, the better the process of recovery will be.
Reflecting on the concept of safety from the perspective of future professional practice, I have learned that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach that will guarantee safety at all times. While safety in nursing is broadly defined as the prevention of harm to patients, the degree to which such prevention is possible varies from one situation to another. Specifically, the recent COVID-19 pandemic revealed both progress and persistent gaps in patient safety and care quality, with the gaps becoming widely known to the public (Sherwood, 2021). Moreover, even as the pandemic has been taken under control, nursing professionals still do not know the extent of the burden of preventable patient harm because of the challenges of categorizing the concept effectively.
Healthcare staff is sometimes reluctant to report problems for fear of receiving negative feedback from subordinates, and there is a lack of aggregate reporting of preventable patient harm. Therefore, teamwork plays an important part in reporting the challenges linked to patient safety. When nurses collaborate on a regular basis, they are more likely to reach a consensus regarding the pressing issues that they encounter in their practice. Incorporating the concept of safety, therefore, is possible by enabling close collaboration between practitioners tasked with ensuring patient safety on a regular basis.
To conclude, the science of safety provides a degree of flexibility when applied in practice. The emphasis is placed on eliminating aspects that cause harm to patients, with the context varying from one patient case to another. Depending on the approach or the adherence to specific nursing theories in their practice, nurses will approach patient safety differently and fine-tune processes to meet their unique needs.
References
Sherwood G. (2021). Quality and safety education for nurses: Making progress in patient safety, learning from COVID-19. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 8(3), 249–251. Web.
Vaismoradi, M., Tella, S., A Logan, P., Khakurel, J., & Vizcaya-Moreno, F. (2020). Nurses’ adherence to patient safety principles: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(6), 2028. Web.