Medical Errors Prevention and Patient Safety: A Practical Resource for Nurses

Written by Deborah Dolan Hunt, PhD, RN, this unique Fast Fact serves as a quick resource for foundational, relevant data, knowledge, and vital information on medical errors, their causes, and how to comprehensively address problems.

As Jean Watson, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN, LL(AAN), Founder of Watson Caring Science Institute and Distinguished Professor/Dean Emerita, University of Colorado Denver, notes, “This practical resource helps nurses develop the skills they need to avoid medical errors and promote patient safety.”

Avoiding Medical Errors and Promoting Patient Safety

This book presents an overview of common preventable issues and their causes, including:

• Medication errors
• Patient falls
• Pressure ulcers
• Infections
• Surgical errors

It focuses on strategies for becoming a safe practitioner through education and competency development, while highlighting major national safety initiatives with improved outcomes.

Fostering Critical Thinking and Reasoning

This Fast Facts discusses several theories that promote quality of care and concrete methods for fostering critical thinking and reasoning. It examines prioritization and delegation as a way to develop skills in addition to:

• Scope of practice
• Intuition
• Ethics
• Leadership
• Emotional intelligence

The final chapter addresses patient safety using a holistic approach encompassing cultural humility and artificial intelligence.

Key Features and Benefits

This book offers a range of benefits, including:

• Helping nurse managers to prioritize and address specific safety and medical errors immediately
• Delivering practical tips on improving patient care and outcomes
• Providing step-by-step guidance on preventing medication errors – the leading cause of adverse events
• Presenting multiple strategies to develop critical thinking and judgment
• Offering interviews with patient safety experts for context and application
• Including case studies, tips from the field, Fast Facts boxes, tables, discussion questions, suggested assignments, and more

With 184 pages of valuable content, this book is an essential resource for nurses and healthcare professionals committed to improving patient safety and avoiding medical errors.