Patient Unit Safety & Care Quality : Promotion of Self-Healing Systems During Hospitals Stays

This book addresses the issue of patient safety and the need to promote it in hospital settings, such as reducing the risk of injury from falls. Hospitals continuously devote quality improvement and research efforts to prevent inpatient falls, which comprise the largest category of reported incidents. Are hospitals explicitly designed to enhance patient safety? Is hospital design, equipment and human resource management (eg: nurse/patient ratio, family involvement) appropriate to promote safe hospital stays? Using inpatient falls as an example, among the nursing quality indicators identified by the American Nurses Association, patient fall rates are perceived as the indicator that could be of most benefit from nurse-led interventions or safety strategies. This book offers empirical evidence and critical arguments to promote the development and understanding of the safety culture in hospital settings and related cases are used to illustrate the authors'' observations and to stimulate the interest of the health care, field, as well as the public, on this topic.