Nursing Reflection: Gibbs Cycle and National Safety Standards

This report provides a nursing reflection on the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) standards, focusing on medication safety and blood management within the Australian healthcare context. The reflection utilizes Gibbs' reflective cycle to analyze personal experiences, evaluate the effectiveness of current practices, and propose improvements. The report identifies the importance of clinical governance, partnering with consumers, infection control, medication safety, comprehensive care, communication, blood management, and responding to acute deterioration. Through the Gibbs cycle, the author reflects on instances of medication errors and blood sample mismanagement, highlighting the need for enhanced monitoring, staff training, and strict adherence to protocols to ensure patient safety. The report emphasizes the importance of individualized patient care and the role of dedicated healthcare staff in maintaining high-quality healthcare services. The author concludes by advocating for continuous improvement and careful monitoring within the NSQHS standards to enhance patient outcomes.

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INDUSTRY REFLECTION NATIONAL SAFETY & QUALITY
STANDARDS

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The safety and quality control commission of Australia mainly developed the national safety and
quality health service standard (Ritchie, Gaca, Siemensma, Taylor & Gilbert, 2018). These
standards being controlled by Australia Government can provide cost effective quality health care
services (Levada, Johnson, Gore & Ireland, 2015).
NSHQS standards:
According to, Flanigan, (2016), there are eight standards, which are as follows:
 Clinical governance:
This standard describes a patient's clinical situation and proper governance procedures
while he or she will stay under medical observation.
 Partnering with consumers:
This standard deals with introducing a person-oriented health care system where patients
remain a pivotal part of decision making leading to empowerment of patients as the partner
of their self care (Hogden, Debono, Greenfield & Braithwaite, 2015).
 Preventing and controlling healthcare associated infection:
This standard explains the strategies and procedures for prevention and management of
infections and elimination by using antimicrobial resistance.
 Medication safety:
This standard explains the strategies to assure that appropriate medicines are provided to
the patients by the clinicians by safely prescribing, dispensing and monitoring.
 Comprehensive care:
This strategy aims at developing individual person oriented care plan by proper check up,
analysis & interpretation, risk identification to prevent and minimize risk in affected areas.
 Communicating for safety:
This strategy deals with effective communications among patients & their families,
clinicians, doctors etc.
 Blood management:

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This strategy deals with self and effective care of patients’ self blood along with other
blood supplies.
 Recognizing and responding to acute deterioration:
This strategy aims at effectively responding to patients with deteriorating mental, physical
and cognitive condition.
Using Gibbs’ reflective cycle for improving the quality of the discussed
standards:
Being an experienced nurse I think from all these mentioned standards medication safety and
blood management standards need more improvement for the safety of the patients.
Retrieved from: https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/uodsseportfolio/2015/10/25/gibbs-
reflective-cycle/ Accessed: 6th of May 2018

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Description:
Medication safety is of utmost importance and monitoring of accurate medicine providing to the
patients is required (Gibbs, 1988). It has been observed sometimes patients receive other
medicines compared to the prescribed ones because of lack of monitoring.
There are few cases in the health care unit where the blood samples are exchanged with another
person due to the inefficiency and carelessness of the medical support teams. Patients are
sometimes wrongly treated due to this misconduct (Boud, Keogh & Walker, 2013).
Feelings:
I feel Medication safety and Blood management strategies need some improvisation as it has
been observed a lot of times that patients are being provided with wrong medicines and blood
samples because of lack of proper marking or carefulness (Schön, 1983).
Evaluation:
Medication safety strategy needs some improvement as sometimes proper medicines are not
distributed to patients because of lack of monitoring.
Blood management is very important for starting the clinical procedures of the patients (Finlay,
2008). Mismanagements in blood samples can cause a hazard to patients (Taylor, 2010).
Analysis:
In my personal experience once a patient suffering from Diarrhea came under my consultation.
She was 25 years old. During analysis I came to know that she was once provided wrong
medicine because of lack of monitoring after prescribing by doctor. She was also a victim of
blood sample exchange to a different person because of absence of proper marking in the sample
and carelessness of the staff. Her situation was deteriorating day by day, which created a huge
question on my duty and responsibility as well.

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Conclusion:
From all of my experiences in my long career one thing I have learnt that every patient is from
different background, culture, socio-economic status. All of them need to be cared and treated
differently. The support staffs must be well efficient and skilled to perform their duty.
Action plan:
I think all of the standards are very helpful not only for the patients and their families but for the
nurses like us and doctors also These standards give us proper strategies for dealing with our
patients and their disease. But as per my opinion medication safety and blood management
system needs some improvement and strict monitoring by dedicated and compassionate health
care staffs so that exchange or misplacement of blood samples and medicines does not take
place. Careful, skilled and dedicated nursing and health care staffs should be deployed in these
important fields.
NSHQS standards are very helpful for Australian people in terms of availing health care services
of good quality within reasonable cost. Although all the standards are quite good, as per my
regular experience some modification to the standards along with dedicated, careful and
responsible staffs will be more fruitful.
Reference List:
Boud, Keogh & Walker, (2013). Promoting reflection in learning: A model. In Boud, Keogh &
Walker (Eds.) Reflection: Turning experience into learning. London: Kogan Page, pp.18-40.
Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL paper, 52, 1-27.
Flanigan, K. (2016). NSQHS standard-patient identification. ACORN: The Journal of
Perioperative Nursing in Australia, 29(1), 23.

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Gibbs G (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education
Unit.Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford. Oxford Brookes University. Reflective Writing: About
Gibbs Reflective Cycle. Retrieved https://www.brookes.ac.uk/students/upgrade/study-
skills/reflective-writing-gibbs/ Accessed 7th of May 2018
Hogden, A., Debono, D., Greenfield, D., & Braithwaite, J. (2015). Partnering with consumers: the
Australian experience of the development of a national health service accreditation standard.
In 32nd International Safety and Quality Conference:: Building quality and safety into the
healthcare system.
Levada, L., Johnson, J., Gore, A., & Ireland, S. (2015). Standards are living
documents... ACORN, 28(1), 25-27.
Ritchie, A., Gaca, M., Siemensma, G., Taylor, J., & Gilbert, C. (2018). Australian health libraries’
contributions to hospital accreditation and the National Safety and Quality Health Services
(NSQHS) Standards: results of the Health Libraries for National Standards (HeLiNS)
research project.
Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action. London: Temple
Smith
Taylor, B. (2010). Reflective practice for healthcare professionals: a practical guide. McGraw-Hill
Education (UK).