This #WeNurses discussion is Guest Hosted by Richard Clark @PtSafetyZone

Mistakes are common place within healthcare with an estimated 1 in 10 patients suffering from an adverse event.

Most of these (around 2/3rds) of errors are avoidable however understanding the causes are the biggest challenge to healthcare providers. What makes a nurse give the wrong medication to the wrong patient? Why are blood samples incorrectly labelled? It doesn’t matter how good you are, we are all prone to making elementary mistakes in the chaotic environment such as a hospital or clinical setting.

The Patient Safety Zone is a three part care bundle designed to change the culture of practice and the way we communicate to our patients as well as our colleagues;

1, Introduce yourself,

2, Effectively confirm patient identification,

3, Eliminate all non-essentialinterruptions/distractions

1, Building on the #HelloMyNameIs campaign by the inspirational Dr Kate Granger,a patient not knowing your name increases risk as our patients are less likely to challenge us if they do not know our name. Although the Hello. My name is…,campaign was designed to improve staff/patient relations, we at Patient Safety Zone believe that if a patient knows our name and they wish to question us or challenge a decision, they are more likely to begin the conversation if they know our name.

2, Assumptions are made that the patient is who we think they are and the patient may not always correct us if we call them by the wrong name. Therefore,asking the patient to volunteer their name and DOB as well as checking their wrist band eliminates the incorrect identification of patients.

3, We know that distractions and non-urgent interruptions cause lapses in concentration, effects decision making and impedes performance. When nurses or any healthcare professional is frequently distracted on a drug round, medication error prevalence increases. The majority of distractions (Around 80%) are avoidable and through cultural changes to practice and as a result patient safety would be enhanced if we took time to investigate common distractions and paid attention to eliminate them.

The Patient Safety Zone care bundle is nothing new. It is frequently described as “what we should be doing” anyway. But our observations have contradicted this and that distractions and interruptions are common place. Within healthcare, we must learn to understand the effects these distractions have upon human performance and begin to remove them from our practice.

About our Guest Host

Richard Clark @PtSafetyZone says "My name is Richard Clark, I am a nurse working within medical education and specialise in non-technical skills and patient safety. "