Safer Healthcare Now!

Safer Health care Now is a National initiative to decrease hospitalized patient complications and mortality rates in Canada. This initiative is an extension of the USA lead 100K Lives Campaign that was created by the Institute for Health care Improvement from Massachusetts, USA. The philosophy is that with the implementation of 6 key strategies in patient care delivery, the USA would save one hundred thousand lives in one year. They managed to surpass their objective, and were empowered to continue the vision further and this evolved into the 5 million Lives Campaign. This campaign has the objective to protect patients from 5 million incidents of medical harm over the next two years.
The six initiatives have a significant impact on the employees and medical staff of an organization, and they also require the support of various services and systems within an organization as well. To achieve the goals outline by the collaborative each team has established leaders. The leaders are able to communicate with their counterparts, as well as support representative through the use of discussion panels online. There are also chat areas set up to help encourage communication within each facility regarding status, challenges of implementation, and above all results. Everything is electronically communicated within a national scope. Participants and leaders also benefit from the technology of teleconferencing, which has linked all participating sites together.

Using Portals to Access Information

The use of Web Portals has become increasingly popular in use to exchange information. The portals allow people with common interests to access information that is meaningful to them. Portals have intricate designs, and are able to provide businesses and individuals with benefits that are difficult to measure.

In an effort to enhance educational information access by nurses, the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), has developed a nursing portal entitled Nurse One. This nursing portal facilitates access to online CPS (drug book), e-therapeutics texts, electronic medical library, as well as self assessment tools that guide Rn's through their required continuing competencies. With each provincial association in Canada having varied standards for licensing regarding continuing education, the Nurse One portal will prove to be a valuable asset to nurses everywhere. The province of New Brunswick has just formalized a continuing education program for all registered nurses who actively practice nursing in the province. This will require nurses in the province to be accountable for their own continuing education, and encourage those who currently participate in such activities to maintain a record. It is the expectation that those who do not participate in continuing education will be expected to. There are many opportunities locally to participate in ongoing education, everything from small one hour sessions on improvements or changes in current practice, to online journal articles to read and keep abreast of larger issues. The challenges of participating in National Conferences will continue to exists, but with innovative ideas and empowerment, these obstacles can be overcome.

If you are a nurse looking for a different avenue to obtain some education, access the CNA Nurse One website- it is worth it!

Has Nursing Education Changed?

Nursing education over the years has changed dramatically. The profession started many years ago, and gained awareness when Florence Nightingale evoked changed. A young woman of a respected family in England, she claimed to have heard the word of God. Much to her parents' dislike, she pursued what is now the nursing profession. At the time however, nursing was less than a respected profession.

Florence Nightingale went to Turkey, and worked at the bedside of injured soldiers in a hospital. She advocated for change in the delivery of care. She implemented basic things such as clean linen, and cleaning equipment. Because of this, the infection rates and mortality rates in the hospital decreased dramatically in the first 6 months she was there. Relatively basic changes made a huge impact- who would have thought?

Are things really so different today? Florence Nightingale made her dramatic changes in 1854. Today issues and challenges surrounding infection control are around proper hand-washing on the part of medical staff. This is not a new idea, and yet is still important today. Granted, things have certainly changed significantly since Florence went into practice. We have seen the education criteria change for nursing over the years. Once a 2 year program, now a 4 year degree. The changes have been dramatic even since the year 2000. The government of Canada maintains statistical data that shows the trend in nursing is for higher levels of education, even at the masters and Phd level.

Those early days discussed little of ongoing education for the bedside nurses. Mention is made in literature that Florence Nightingale moved to more of an administrative role later in her practice. She realized that change within the profession requires assistance from others. She gained support from the doctors, as well as government to support the growth of the profession. Her passion for caring for people remained. She was known to walk the halls at night of the hospital, checking on the young men who benefited so deeply from her vision and passion. But for her, many would not be there. It is from these nightly walks that she is known as The lady with the lamp.

To answer the question in the title, my opinion is yes, and no. Has it evolved and moved forward? Absolutely. Today we do things that would have only been a dream for those in 1854. Our standards have evolved, and our practice has been enhanced. The original basic components of clean linen, clean environments, but most importantly compassion and caring, the need to feel as though our time has truly made a difference in the life of a person, this has not changed. It is a challenge in our busy workplaces, but we all aspire for that brief moment in time when we know with our hearts that we were right where we were suppose to be. Providing caring, understanding and compassion for someone who just needs to be acknowledged. That is still the heartbeat of nursing, and has not changed in the least since 1854.