Roles and Regulations: Safety in Medical & Surgical Nursing

This essay delves into the critical aspects of safety within medical and surgical nursing, focusing on the roles and responsibilities of registered nurses in Australia. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining a safe environment for both patients and healthcare professionals. The essay explores the guidelines provided by the Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation, addressing issues such as manual handling, workplace environment, and financial amenities for nurses. It highlights the impact of safety concerns on patient care and the need for effective coping strategies for nurses facing stress and potential violence. A literature review examines existing research on stress, coping mechanisms, and support systems for Australian nurses. The essay concludes by emphasizing the need for government and healthcare facility support to improve nurse well-being and ensure quality patient care.

Running head: SAFETY IN MEDICAL & SURGICAL AREA
SAFETY IN MEDICAL & SURGICAL AREA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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INTRODCUTION
Medical & Surgical Nursing is one of the most important streams of nursing that
specializes in providing appropriate care to the patients and prepare them for various
perioperative care before, during and after an operation. Registered nurses and enrolled
nurses in Australia can opt for these streams of nursing. However, they have to take special
training for that (Lewis et al., 2016). The importance of these two streams is abundant in a
health care setting. Safety is one of the main criteria that should be the most minutely
maintained and inspected throughout the nursing procedure. In this essay, the roles and
regulations of registered nurse in maintaining safety of themselves are explained in details.
DISCUSSION
Nurses carry the duty of taking care and ensuring the safety for the patients. The
safety of themselves is also of utmost importance for providing continuous care to the
admitted patients. As they are entitled to care for the patients, they also face violence from
time to time in one way or the other. The nurses taking care of the elderly patients also face a
continuous back pain, which develops from handling the older patients (Australian Nursing
and Midwifery Federation, 2020).
To address the risks the nurses in Australia face, the Australian Nursing & Midwifery
Federation have designed a guideline, which should be followed by the employers of the
nurses as well as the nurses themselves to avoid any situation where the nurses might feel
unsafe or under any threat. The guidelines ask the nurses to encourage the patients to carry
their own weight by themselves as much as possible to avoid any injury. It suggests that the
practise of manual lifting should be limited to emergency cases scenarios. The employers
should set the workplace environment as per the Australian guidelines to facilitate the nurses’
working. All the facilities, fixtures and equipment should also be present in the facility to

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help the nurses in every step. The nurses should also be provided with financial amenities to
ensure their proper care towards themselves as well as the patients. The guideline also entitles
the hospital authorities to not and assess conditions of all the patients while taking admission
to the facility about their manual handling requirements. Based on the notes the risk that the
nurses would face in handling the patients should be found out to neutralize many risk
factors, which include their body postures, twisting, bending, weight, height, history of
falling down and their capability of cooperating with the nurses. All the employers of the
nurses across Australia should arrange for frequent training and educative seminars on
various processes of nursing to keep the nurses engaged and efficient in most of the scenarios
which include occupational health and safety rights, policies and procedures, assessing the
needs of the admitted patients and appropriate usage of various techniques and equipment to
ensure proper care (Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, 2020).
The safety regarded problems that the nurses face exerts a huge impact on the
patients. The quality care standards are often observed to have fallen below the optimum
level because of various safety issues that the nurses face. The nurses involved with these
issues are also observed to absent minded during work hours, remain irritated and makes
mistake in following the protocol thus, bringing in danger for the patients. Thus, it is very
essential to understand the problems they are facing and solve those problems at the earliest
(Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, 2020).
As a nurse, I would be follow the protocols set by the National Midwifery Board of
Australia and the Australian Nurse and Midwifery Federation to provide quality and safe care
to the patients under my charge. In case of any situations that might arise regarding safety, I
would act and assess according to the protocol and try resolving it with calmness. In case it
worsens, I would launch a report to the nursing manager of the hospital for taking further
actions (NSW Nurses & Midwives Association, 2020).

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LITERATURE REVIEW
The safety of nurses in Australia is one of the most discussed topics. There are also
some researches and reviews to understand their situations and the problems the nurses have
been facing. A review was conducted by scientists to conclude about the status of the stress
and issues the Australian nurses have been facing. The authors performed a systemic review
of the available literatures on internet that mentioned of the stress and the coping strategies
used by the nurses of Australia. The results showed that the main stressors that mostly
affected the nursing population were overload of the work, experiencing aggression from the
patients and their families and conflicts about their roles. The coping strategies that the nurses
depended on included self-control in situations of extreme conflicts, solving the problems and
they asked for support. These have led them to accumulate excessive job-oriented pressure
and showed detrimental effect on their health and wellbeing. These stressors also imposed a
detrimental effect on their family and personal lives. The authors recommended using
effective and innovative coping strategies and maintaining a supportive relationship with
their family and the immediate society (Lim, Bogossian & Ahern, 2010).
Another research was conducted on the coping strategies that experienced as well as
inexperienced nurses require utilized in their everyday lives. The authors conducted a
qualitative case study, for which they interviewed twelve experienced nurses and nine
inexperienced nurses. The study resulted in finding of the huge differences that the
experienced and inexperienced had in their perceptions. The coping strategies in both the
groups were flexible shifts at work. The experienced nurses stated that working in shift was
beneficial for them, whereas the inexperienced nurses stated otherwise. The experienced
nurses also stated the need for connecting with their family and society as one of their coping
strategy whereas the inexperienced nurses stated that they felt a strange disconnection from
their family and society, which led to quite a few problems for them. The experienced nurses

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also stated that they had very little support from the managers they were working under. The
authors concluded by stating the importance of rostering the nursing shifts and the required
support they deserve and require from their families and the society to work in a clear mind
(Gifkins, Loudoun & Johnston, 2017).
CONCLUSION
Thus, it can be concluded that the nurses lack the support they actually deserve from
both the family and society in Australia. The government is working towards designing
newer policies to support the nurses and newer policies for lending them further support is
also required. The health and wellbeing of the nurses should also be looked after by the
nursing managers in the healthcare facilities they work in.

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REFERENCES
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. (2020). Safe Patient Handling. Retrieved 25
March 2020, from
http://www.anmf.org.au/documents/policies/P_Safe_Patient_Handling.pdf
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. (2020). Workplace Health & Safety and
Workers Compensation. Retrieved 25 March 2020, from
http://anmf.org.au/pages/workplace-health-safety
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. (2020). Workers' compensation and
rehabilitation for injured and ill nurses and midwives [Ebook]. Australian Nursing
and Midwifery Federation. Retrieved from
http://anmf.org.au/documents/policies/P_Workers_comp_rehab_nurses_midwives.pdf
Gifkins, J., Loudoun, R., & Johnston, A. (2017). Coping strategies and social support needs
of experienced and inexperienced nurses performing shiftwork. Journal of advanced
nursing, 73(12), 3079-3089.
Lewis, S. L., Bucher, L., Heitkemper, M. M., Harding, M. M., Kwong, J., & Roberts, D.
(2016). Medical-Surgical Nursing-E-Book: Assessment and Management of Clinical
Problems, Single Volume. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Lim, J., Bogossian, F. & Ahern, K. (2010) Stress and coping in Australian nurses: a
systematic review. International Nursing Review; 57 (1).
NSW Nurses & Midwives Association. (2020). Work Health and Safety Essentials for Nurses
and Midwives [Ebook]. Retrieved from
https://www.nswnma.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/NSWNMA-Work-Health-
and-Safety-Essentials-for-Nurses-and-Midwives-2013.pdf