Essay Example on Protecting Patients: A Nurse's Essential Role

Introduction

Ensuring the safety of the patient, protecting the patient's right and double checking for errors when administering service to patients present a couple of ways a nurse can use to protect a patient in any given healthcare. One of the critical roles in protecting patient confidentiality information in the healthcare facility is by providing patient with essential services. A nurse should protect the patient's information according to the set standards of policy regarding the patient's information. By protecting patient's information nurses here then ensures that they adhere to the privacy policy of given healthcare facility as well as the health sector. Protecting patients is one of the quality roles of nurses in the health sector. The paper here analyses the role of professional nurses in protecting patients in areas such as patients' privacy information among others.

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Patients' Right

As a professional nurse in charge of the patient, I will ensure the patient right is protected by knowing their wishes before making any irrational decision. Knowing a patient wish is essential because it is part of their right, and as a professional nurse, I would always protect their right by communicating to the patient's family to avoid disagreement that may result from the patient wish, for example, the right to formulate advance directives (Boamah, Laschinger & Wong 2018). It is an essential right that nurses should acknowledge and get the consent of patients before making any single step.

Privacy and Confidentiality

Personal health information amongst other patient's data is essential for privacy purpose and should there be handled with extreme care to avoid any form of breach in patient information. As a professional nurse, I would ensure there is privacy in patient information my minimising loop and breaches bearing in mind that current generation technology can create more violations and patient information may leak. Information such as patient's condition should never be disclosed.

Errors

Errors form the basis of poor services offered in hospitals, and as a professional nurse, I will ensure the minimal errors no longer exist when offering patients services (Cooper, Hatfield & Yeomans 2019). No errors give patients good states of health unlike when there is an unchecked procedure which may result into the error for example infection errors and documenting errors, and this can be avoided by communicating with other health care team who are also my members

Safety

Safety of the patient is an ideal practice that all professional nurses should practice to help protect the patient while they are treated (Panagioti, Geraghty & Johnson 2018). The safety of patient begins right away from a medical procedure to the point where a patient may be released; safety may be practised to prevent safety issues such as retrospective medical complications in the medical procedures by the professional nurses. Nurses should ensure the safety of the patient is managed even after they are discharged and this is made possible by providing that nurses communicate to relevant authorities about how to handle a patient when released and when at home.

Patient Education

As a professional nurse, I will always act towards ensuring that despite medical procedures, I will always advise and educate patients about managing their chronic conditions. It would be the basic point in ensuring that my patient is protected from chronic diseases such as stroke, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders.

Conclusion

Privacy and confidentiality, safety, and patient education among others are the basic areas professional nurses should insist on ensuring that patient's protection is to the highest level possible. As a licensed nurse, the privacy of patient information such as condition he or she suffers from should be kept safe to ensure the patient is protected.

References

Boamah, S. A., Laschinger, H. K. S., Wong, C., & Clarke, S. (2018). Effect of transformational leadership on job satisfaction and patient safety outcomes. Nursing Outlook, 66(2), 180-189. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29174629

Cooper, K., Hatfield, E., & Yeomans, J. (2019). Animated stories of medical error as a means of teaching undergraduates patient safety: an evaluation study. Perspectives on medical education, 1-5. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40037-019-0498-1

Panagioti, M., Geraghty, K., Johnson, J., Zhou, A., Panagopoulou, E., Chew-Graham, C., ... & Esmail, A. (2018). Association between physician burnout and patient safety, professionalism, and patient satisfaction: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA internal medicine, 178(10), 1317-1331. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30193239