Registered Nurse's Role in Patient Safety and Person-Centered Care

This report delves into the pivotal role of the Registered Nurse (RN) in fostering a secure clinical setting while delivering person-centered care to adult patients grappling with acute health challenges. The report emphasizes the importance of the RN's role in ensuring patient safety, including the correct identification of patients and marking of surgical sites. It examines the purpose and components of a Surgical Safety Checklist, highlighting its significance in preventing errors and improving communication within the surgical team. The report further discusses key considerations such as allergy assessments, antibiotic prophylaxis, and the importance of verbal verification of labeling. It explores the need for reviewing patient safety risks during surgery, anticipating critical events, and discussing key concerns for patient recovery and management. The report also covers the importance of confirming patient identity, surgical site marking, and the implications of allergies and antibiotic prophylaxis. All these aspects are crucial to ensure the safety and well-being of patients, and the report highlights the RN's role in ensuring these practices are followed effectively. The document, contributed by a student, is available on Desklib, a platform offering AI-based study tools for students.

Running head: NURSING 1
Nursing
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Discuss the role of the Registered Nurse in maintaining a safe clinical environment whilst
providing person-centered care to adult patients experiencing acute health issues.
Person-centered care is an approach used by health professionals to involve the patients
in making decisions regarding their wellbeing (Ross, Tod & Clarke, 2015). To attain the best
possible outcomes, registered nurses provide and direct a safe care environment to protect both
the patient and clinicians. While partnering with patients experiencing acute health issues in
making decisions about their health, registered nurses assess the patient’s mobility (Edvardsson,
Watt & Pearce, 2017). Also, they assess the use of assistive devices to transfer, balance and
ambulate and then provide education on correct body mechanics and mobility devices.
In addition, registered nurses consult with physicians and nurse supervisors to ascertain
the best therapeutic plans for the patient and then adjust those treatment plans as indicated by
conditions and responses of the patient (Edvardsson et al., 2017). When delivering therapy to the
patients they ensure the instruments used are clean, sterilized and disinfected to prevent
transmission of infections to the patients.
Explain the purpose of a Surgical Safety Checklist like the one provided
A Surgical Safety Checklist is a patient safety communication tool utilized by a team of
operating room practitioners to discuss essential details about every operation case (Ragusa,
Bitterman, Auerbach & Healy III, 2016). It is used to initiate, guide and formalize
communication between the staff members performing a surgical operation and to integrate the
steps of the briefing, time out and debriefing into surgical workflow. Its purpose is to guarantee
staff and patient’s safety and make sure that the appropriate method is being followed on the
correct patient.

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Moreover, Surgical Safety Checklist ensures that all the steps in preparing the patient for
operation are followed systematically. As an illustration, the patient and the team have to
confirm specific details to the anaesthetist, nurse and surgeon before the induction of
anaesthesia, before incision and also before living the operation room (Ragusa et al., 2016). It is
presumed that by regularly checking regular safety problems and by better staff communication
and dynamics, perioperative morbidity along with mortality can be improved.
Discuss the importance of confirming patients’ identity
Throughout the healthcare institution, the failure of confirming the identity of a patient
continues to lead to transfusion errors, medication errors, discharge of infants to the wrong
families and wrong person procedures. Before the induction of anesthesia and before surgery, the
checklist coordinator verbally affirms the patient’s identity to make sure that the team does not
perform the procedure on the wrong patient (Dabholkar, Velankar, Suryanarayan, Dabholkar,
Saberwal & Verma, 2018). The practice of correctly identifying a patient improves the
authenticity of the patient’s identification process. It helps to make sure that an accurate match is
made between the treatment and the person. Therefore, the process will help eradicate errors and
enhance patient care.
Discuss the importance of marking the patients’ surgery site/location
The marking of the operative site is part of the preoperative verification procedure. The
purpose of the marking is to clearly identify the intended location of incision or insertion.
Furthermore, marking the site prevents operational interventions from being performed on the
wrong patient, wrong side of the body or wrong part of the body. Also, it ensures that the
surgeon follows the correct procedure according to the operation site (Sim, Angadi, Jarvis &
Porteous, 2016).

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Discuss the importance of knowing if a patient has any known allergies
The importance of knowing if a patient has any allergies helps the anaesthetist to know if
there are potential risks to the patient receiving the anesthesia since some anesthetic medications
trigger cross-allergies. When the anesthesiologist is aware of any allergies he will choose certain
medications over others that will be safer and monitor closely for specific complications or side
effects which might be more likely to happen and have a plan to handle them if they happen.
Moreover, the anaesthesiologists will give a piece of advice on how the patient can lower his risk
before the operation by doing things such as stopping particular drugs if the surgery is not
urgent. Also, the surgeon needs to be aware as the anesthetics can increase bleeding.
Discuss the importance of knowing if antibiotic prophylaxis has been given
Antibiotic prophylaxis is administered within an hour to an incision whose objective is to
have the concentration in the tissue at its highest at the beginning and throughout the operation.
The coordinator inquires if prophylaxis antibiotics were administered to reduce the risk of
surgical infections as well as antibacterial stewardship (Gouvêa, Novaes, Pereira & Iglesias,
2015). Furthermore, avoiding the unnecessary use of antibiotics helps in reducing the occurrence
of negative effects along with antibiotic resistance development.
Discuss the importance of surgeon verbally checking labeling with the surgical team
By verbally confirming the correct labeling, the surgeon and his team avoid laboratory
errors since incorrect labeling of pathological specimens is potentially disastrous for a patient.
Moreover, it avoids the problem of misdiagnosis and unnecessary treatments along with other
negative patient care effects as well as waste staff time spent on sorting and correcting the errors.
Also, it will help to improve identification to prevent errors in the laboratory by rechecking wrist

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identification bands to diminish specimen labeling error rates (Martis, Hannam, Lee, Merry &
Mitchell, 2016).
Discuss the importance of reviewing any patient safety risks during surgery
In the operation room, there is a broad range of patient safety risks such as retained
surgical items, improper medication labeling and administration, surgical site infections and
improper patient positioning and lifting. When the surgeons, nurses, and anesthetics review the
possibility of any of these patient safety risks, they can identify the source of errors and avoid
more risks. Moreover, the review helps in detecting cases of human error as well as occurrences
of equipment malfunction and identifies areas that require to be reinforced and aligned (Oak,
Dave, Garasia & Parelkar, 2015).
Discuss the importance of discussing any key concerns for the patients’ recovery and
management of the patient
The anesthetist, nurse and surgeon analyze the post-operative recovery and management
plan centralizing in precise on anesthetic or intraoperative problems which might affect the
patient. Its importance is that it results in an effectual and proper transfer of analytical details to
the whole team (Santrock & Hyer, 2019). Moreover, the discussion of the key patient concerns
after surgery helps in recognizing unfavorable trends in the course of recovery and retaliates
expeditiously to prevent further compromise as well as other potential complications. The
discussion also provides knowledge between the health professionals which could be utilized to
outline strategies for support and follow-up operations throughout postoperative surgery.
Additionally, addressing the important safety concerns enables the team to focus on the
patient and the operation which helps the surgical team to proceed with the procedure with
confidence and providing excellent patient care as well as preventing complications.

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Discuss the importance of anticipating critical events during surgery
In ensuring communication of analytical patient problems, the checklist coordinator leads
an abrupt discussion among the nursing staff, anesthesia staff and surgeon of critical dangers and
procedural plans. This discussion is important to ensure the safety of the operation, successful
collaboration and help in preventing considerable problems. Besides, anticipation being
established as a behavioral indicator of teamwork quality, it enables effective planning and the
team’s expertise enable them to conform their communication techniques in retaliation to acute
conditions (Sexton, Johnson, Gotsch, Hussein, Cavuoto & Guru, 2018).

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References
Dabholkar, Y., Velankar, H., Suryanarayan, S., Dabholkar, T. Y., Saberwal, A. A., & Verma, B.
(2018). Evaluation and Customization of WHO Safety Checklist for Patient Safety in
Otorhinolaryngology. Indian Journal of Otolaryngology and Head & Neck
Surgery, 70(1), 149-155.
Edvardsson, D., Watt, E., & Pearce, F. (2017). Patient experiences of caring and person‐
centredness are associated with perceived nursing care quality. Journal of Advanced
Nursing, 73(1), 217-227.
Gouvêa, M., Novaes, C. D. O., Pereira, D. M. T., & Iglesias, A. C. (2015). Adherence to
guidelines for surgical antibiotic prophylaxis: a review. Brazilian Journal of Infectious
Diseases, 19(5), 517-524.
Martis, W. R., Hannam, J. A., Lee, T., Merry, A. F., & Mitchell, S. J. (2016). Improved
compliance with the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist is associated
with reduced surgical specimen labeling errors. The New Zealand Medical
Journal, 129(1441), 63-67.
Oak, S. N., Dave, N. M., Garasia, M. B., & Parelkar, S. V. (2015). Surgical checklist application
and its impact on patient safety in pediatric surgery. Journal of postgraduate
medicine, 61(2), 92.
Ragusa, P. S., Bitterman, A., Auerbach, B., & Healy III, W. A. (2016). Effectiveness of surgical
safety checklists in improving patient safety. Orthopedics, 39(2), e307-e310.

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Ross, H., Tod, A. M., & Clarke, A. (2015). Understanding and achieving person‐centered care:
the nurse perspective. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 24(9-10), 1223-1233.
Santrock, R. D., & Hyer, C. F. (2019). Preoperative Considerations, Surgical Planning, and
Postoperative Protocols. In Essential Foot and Ankle Surgical Techniques (pp. 1-13).
Springer, Cham.
Sexton, K., Johnson, A., Gotsch, A., Hussein, A. A., Cavuoto, L., & Guru, K. A. (2018).
Anticipation, teamwork and cognitive load: chasing efficiency during robot-assisted
surgery. BMJ Qual Saf, 27(2), 148-154.
Sim, F. C. J., Angadi, D., Jarvis, G. E., & Porteous, M. (2016). Assessing clarity and erasability
of commercially available pens for surgical site marking: a comparative study in human
volunteers. Patient safety in surgery, 10(1), 11.