Patient safety has always been one of the main focuses of health. It has traditionally been integrated into nurses’ day-to-day activities. However, as electronic health records and health information exchanges are being deployed, issues of patient safety continue to arise (Tietze and McBride, 2016). Although the number of patient safety initiatives is rising, hospital workers still resist them since such initiatives often take the form of audit and result in trying to change the managerial system of the hospital.
Research Overview
Since nurses are directly linked to improved patient performance (Squires, Jylhä, Jun, Ensio, and Kinnunen, 2017), the problem of “Advancing the Status of Nursing: Reconstructing Professional Nursing Identity through Patient Safety Work” by Heldal, Kongsvik, and Haland is that patient safety programs usually affect not only patients but also the hospital staff, notably nurses. The research purpose is to discover the influence of implementing patient safety programs on nursing. The objectives of the research are to define and highlight the ways patient safety programs may change professional nursing identity and the perception of their activities. The hypothesis is that implementing patient care programs results in a change in the definition of nursing.
A nursing unit was followed for some months, and three hospital managers and ten nurses were interviewed; all interviewees were well acquainted with the program. Data analysis was conducted by all three authors of the research who read both transcripts and notes of the studies.
Results
The research data analysis showed that the perception of nursing significantly changed after the implementation of the patient safety program. There were four main categories of changes that were observed: the shift from trusting professionals to trust the system, nursing work became more visible than before, the concept of care-approach gave its way to cure-approach, and nursing got a higher perceived professional status.
The research is credible and valid since it was conducted by professionals in the sphere and based on various data sources. In the study, transparent research steps provide a clear methodology, and the contexts and thick descriptions account for transferability.
References
Heldal, F., Kongsvik T., & Haland, E. (2019). Advancing the status of nursing: reconstructing professional nursing identity through patient safety work. BMC Health Services Research, 19(1), doi: 10.1186/s12913-019-4222-y.
Squires, A., Jylhä, V., Jun, J., Ensio, A., & Kinnunen, J. (2017). A scoping review of nursing workforce planning and forecasting research. Journal of Nursing Management, 25(8), 587–596.
Tietze, M., & McBride, S. (2016). Nursing Informatics for the Advanced Practice Nurse: Patient Safety, Quality, Outcomes, and Interprofessionalism. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.