Importance of Health Standards in Nursing Practice

Running head: HEALTH STANDARDS
HEALTH STANDARDS
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1
HEALTH STANDARDS
Description:
I was placed under a clinical preceptor during my time of placement where I had to work
with another of my friend. We were placed under the guidance of the preceptor and we had to
follow her throughout the shift to develop knowledge about how to conduct healthcare services
and to apply our theoretical knowledge in the practical field. During the time of the placement,
we were assigned as a team to care for a patient who was admitted to the medical-surgical ward
after she had a fall while working in the garden. She had several skin tears over her knees,
ankles, arms, forehead and many others. Moreover, she also complained of having weakness,
reduced ability to exercise, shortness of breath and palpitations. She was actually feeling dizzy in
the garden that made her fall by losing her balance. The senior nurses identified that she was
suffering from atrial fibrillation and advised us with the necessary interventions. They also
dressed the wounds and advised us the proper ways by which we should conduct the dressing.
However, the shift was quite busy and we had to rush from one bed to the other to complete the
interventions. Due to very short time and large piles of interventions that were to be provided, I
saw her opening the dressing of the patient with bare hands and applying the new dressing
without sterilizing the instruments. Before, I could have said anything; she completed the
dressing and went on to her medication chart. The patient complained her of pain and fever and
therefore administered her aspirin in high dose even when she was on warfarin for her atrial
fibrillation symptoms. Later, the person was seen to suffer from internal hemorrhage along with
infection of the wound that affected her quality health.

2
HEALTH STANDARDS
Feeling:
I felt quite upset as we both were assigned for the quality care of the patient. It was
disheartening to see my friend being blamed for the poor care practice she had conducted. I also
felt bad as I could not guide her properly and before I could have advised her anything, she had
already conducted the interventions. I felt guilty that if I would have helped her in the right time,
she would not have faced such consequences and we both would have ensured quality care for
the patients.
Evaluation:
While evaluating the incidences, I noticed that one of the main contributors to the
negative outcome of the intervention was improper method of infection control and prevention
techniques. The health standard three of the National Healthy Safety and Quality standards states
the importance of prevention and controlling of the different types of healthcare associated
infection. Every nursing professional should be well aware of the different systems and the
strategies that not only help in prevention of the infections but also help in managing the
infections when they are seen to occur. Researchers are of the opinion that nurses should have
the knowledge and skills to ensure prevention of the development of microbes with the proper
use of the antimicrobials (Percival et al., 2015). Secondly, another health standard that was
breached here is the standard four that provides significance to the medication safety. This
strategy is mainly seen to provide significance on the nursing professionals to ensure following
of systems and taking up strategies that would help them to prescribe, dispense and administer
proper medications to the informed patients along with effective monitoring of the utilization of
the medications (Warholak et al., 2015). The bad part was that both the health standards were