This book lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses' working conditions and demands.

This case studies book is an indispensable resource for educators, students, and practitioners of nursing. It is innovative in its application of lessons from the communication sciences to common challenges in the delivery of safe patient care. The authors apply basic tenets of human communication to the context of nursing to provide a foundation for practices that can advance the safety and quality of care. The cases, which describe "close calls" and adverse events, are organized along the continuum of healthcare delivery, providing quick access to solutions in commonly encountered care situations. Each case is accompanied by a discussion of how skillful communication can be key to preventing and recovering from errors and adverse events. Thought-provoking discussion questions and references for further reading make this book a valuable reference for nursing educators, students, and practitioners across the world.

Pamphlet is a succinct statement of the ethical obligations and duties of individuals who enter the nursing profession, the profession's nonnegotiable ethical standard, and an expression of nursing's own understanding of its commitment to society. Provides a framework for nurses to use in ethical analysis and decision-making.

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

Builds on the theoretical foundations of communication to develop effective skills step by step. Explores the use of therapeutic communication in patient-client relationships, in health promotion and education. as well as in interactions with colleagues. Features Communication Safety Alert boxes that demonstrate how communication impacts patient safety. Offers questionnaires and quizzes in each chapter to foster critical thinking. Uses a series of case studies or "Reflections" to provide real-world situations where students can confront difficult and challenging situations.

The purpose of this volume of the Annual Review of Nursing Research is to provide an introduction for nurses and other health professionals as they begin to study policy. It includes chapters that consider policy triggers, policy development, policy implementation, and policy outcome evaluation. Chapters have been included to explore healthcare policy across the spectrum, starting with the first spark that ignites an idea which leads to policy. This volume provides readers with new insights on how policies impact health, both positively and negatively, how policies come into being, are implemented, and how the effects of policy interventions are evaluated. Chapters aim to encourage all clinicians to consider how policy, at all levels, impacts individual patients, communities, and the health care delivery system. Our nation’s health-care system is currently undergoing an unprecedented transformation that provides nurses and the nursing profession with distinct challenges and exciting opportunities to provide visionary leadership, commensurate with its ever-increasing numbers of educated professionals. Key Topics: The Use of Restraint in Civilian and Military Health Care Settings “Playing the Movie Directly”: Perceptions of Tobacco Content in Video Games Body Art in the Perioperative Setting Ethical Consideration for Nursing Research With Military Populations Using Nursing Science to Inform Health Policy: The Role of the National Institute of Nursing Research Engaging in Policy During Graduate Training A Policy Apprenticeship in the Office of U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye

Informatics integrates principles from various disciplines such as computer science, information theory, cognitive science, and social science to analyze and understand complex systems of information. It involves the design, implementation, and application of computational solutions to real-world problems, focusing on both the technical aspects of computing systems and the human aspects of information processing and interaction. Informatics encompasses diverse areas such as bioinformatics, health informatics, business informatics, and geographic information systems, reflecting its broad applicability across different domains. Through the study of informatics, individuals learn to harness the power of data and technology to enhance decision-making, improve processes, and drive innovation in various fields.

Each year, hospital-acquired infections, prescribing and treatment errors, lost documents and test reports, communication failures, and other problems have caused thousands of deaths in the United States, added millions of days to patients’ hospital stays, and cost Americans tens of billions of dollars. Despite (and sometimes because of) new medical information technology and numerous well-intentioned initiatives to address these problems, threats to patient safety remain and in some areas are on the rise. In First, Do Less Harm, twelve health care professionals and researchers plus two former patients look at patient safety from a variety of perspectives, finding many of the proposed solutions to be inadequate or impractical. Several contributors to this book attribute the failure to confront patient safety concerns to the influence of the "market model" on medicine and emphasize the need for hospital-wide teamwork and greater involvement from frontline workers (from janitors and aides to nurses and physicians) in planning, implementing, and evaluating effective safety initiatives. Several chapters in First, Do Less Harm focus on the critical role of interprofessional and occupational practice in patient safety. Rather than focusing on the usual suspects—physicians, safety champions, or high level management—these chapters expand the list of "stakeholders" and patient safety advocates to include nurses, patient care assistants, and other staff, as well as the health care unions that may represent them. First, Do Less Harm also highlights workplace issues that negatively affect safety: including sleeplessness, excessive workloads, outsourcing of hospital cleaning, and lack of teamwork between physicians and other health care staff. In two chapters, experts explain why the promise of health care information technology to fix safety problems remains unrealized, with examples that are at once humorous and frightening. A book that will be required reading for physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, public health officers, quality and risk managers, healthcare educators, economists, and policymakers, First, Do Less Harm concludes with a list of twenty-seven paradoxes and challenges facing everyone interested in making care safe for both patients and those who care for them.