Improving Health Care Quality & Patient Safety in an Acute Care Essay

Improving Health Care Quality & Patient Safety in an Acute Care Setting - Essay Example , traditionally dealt with through focus on mistakes from individuals, are now accepted to result, not from human error alone, but also from failure of systems. For this reason, it is important to maintain safety and quality of healthcare in acute settings. Preventable adverse effects, in particular, are believed to be because of systemic and latent failures in care-delivery systems. The key to ensuring safety and quality in acute healthcare settings is using defense mechanisms, which can identify and interrupt situations that could be dangerous (Healy, 2009). One example of this in an acute clinical setting is the systematic surveillance of patients by nurses that may serve, as a defense mechanism to stop dangerous situations, as well as strategies for error recovery. There are several key challenges that face quality and patient safety in acute settings. Systemic factors like underuse of technology in existence, failure to include family and patient in making decisions, poor collaboration from healthcare members, inadequate resources, and poor staffing is one of them. Another challenge has to do, with human factors like the skills and education of nurses, to implement quality and safety strategies (Healy, 2009). Novice nurses, especially, are overwhelmed by time and task constraints, which prevent them from integrating the â€Å"big picture† that effective improvement of quality and patient safety in acute care settings requires. Resources like data access and time are vital in the performance of comprehensive assessments. Healthcare workers who are interrupted, distracted, or responsible for functions that are not related to nursing will not have enough time to devote to this improvement. Collaboration, which is essential to this improve ment, especially with patients and their families, has influence on acute patients’ outcomes (Healy, 2009). Policies or unit structures that are not conducive to this collaboration impedes on the process, as well as adversely

Was Colonialism Good for Uganda? :: African Africa History

Was Colonialism Good for Uganda? Introduction The past is another country, where it is only possible to go as a tourist, and which we will never fully understand. We can describe what we see, but it is far more difficult to know why people acted in the way they did, or what they believed, and why they believed it. Uganda too is another country, which did not even exist before the white man went there. Even the name reflects the ideas of the first explorers, whose gateway into the new territory was via the Buganda tribe, whom they were later to use as their colonial agents as British rule was extended. Those who 'discovered' Ugandan and the source of the Nile which the first explorers were seeking - men such as Speke and Stanley - and the soldiers and administrators who came after them undoubtedly believed in the superiority of European culture in a way which we today would consider unacceptably racist. Although they were impressed by the sophistication of Bugandan society, they implicitly assumed that Africa was more backward than Europe, that Africans would benefit from exposure to Western standards and practises, and of course from Christianity. To a degree this allowed them either to justify or even to suppress what now looks to be the crude reality that their underlying agenda was the extension of British influence, the promotion of British commerce, and the expansion of the British Empire, all without reference to the actual wishes of the Ugandan people. But then, even in Britain at thattime, democracy was a new idea and many people, including women, still did not have the vo te. Having said that, many Ugandans would today accept that their country had at some stage to be brought into contact with the modern world, and even that they were comparatively lucky in being colonised by the British rather than by, for instance, the Belgians whose brutal rule in the Congo was far crueller than that of the British Protectorate in Uganda. Moreover, the fact that the arrival of the British in Uganda was not accompanied by the theft of African land for white farmers - as it was in Zimbabwe or Kenya - meant that some of the bitterness and resentment felt about European rule in some African countries was not a feature in Uganda. So race relations, even today, are more relaxed in Uganda than in many parts of the Continent.

Coolest thing i ever did Essay

The coolest thing I’ve ever done or should I say the dumbest thing I ever done was run my mother’s car into our house. It was the end of summer starting my freshman year at Destrehan High School and I wanted to do something that would have made me seem cool to the kids around the neighborhood so I decided to steal my mother’s car. My mom owned a 2002 Nissan Pathfinder that she didn’t really use, usually just my step dad would use it to go to work and my mom used the truck so I didn’t see a problem with them riding together one morning so I can have the car for myself for the day. One morning during the beginning of the week my step dad had set the key down on the table and it was just a key so I could have easily took it and have everyone else think he misplaced it. For two days straight my parents was looking for the key and I acted as though I had no idea of what they was looking for but he just used the spare key. The third day I woke up and I looked out my window and I saw the car outside knowing I still had the stolen key under my mattress. I was a little too anxious because I knew I had the car to myself and I couldn’t get caught for taking it. It was around eleven o’clock when I got up and went get in the car. A free adventure I took and I thought I was a grown driver driving on the road with other drivers but I wasn’t it was very illegal but I didn’t care†¦ I felt cool. An hour went by and I traveled all over Destrehan I felt like my cool patch should have been given to me that day because it took a lot out of me to do something that crazy. I arrived back to my place without being stopped by the police or pulling up to the truck in the driveway, I felt so bad even hammer couldn’t touch me. My step dad always parked the car really close to the end of the driveway so that was my goal to do, I pulled in, parked the car, and got out. Then I realized I wasn’t close enough and they would have notice something funny. So I decided to get back in the car and park it correctly. Backing up I didn’t notice that I was that far away so I pushed on the gas because our driveway was more of a hill so I needed a little help getting up there. When I pushed the gas I went to fast and had hit the trash can that was in front the house, I thought it was funny and didn’t really worry about it because I could have switched it out with someone else’s. I got out and I noticed I parked the car correctly so that was a good thing but when I walked towards the trash can I heard some noise behind it and I saw that the front window was shattered, that’s when I realized things just got real. I started to panic and come up with lies to explain the window since the car didn’t look damage. My friend Shawn came outside and stared making fun of me because he knew I was going to get in trouble. As he walked in my house to go get something to drink he noticed something that I should have took a look at. His exact words were â€Å" umm Laci I think you should come take a look at this† I know I was inside but I couldn’t understand why I could see outside, that’s when I knew I was dead but I still felt cool for some reason. Explaining this to my mom wasn’t easy at all so I stayed a few feet away from her. When my step dad arrived home he did a little bit more investigation and saw that not only did I brake the trash can, the window, and ran the car through the wall but I also smashed the hose pipe that was connected to the house inside the bricks so there was no water in the house at all. It took them a long time to forgive and trust me again and it also took a lot of butt whippings to relive all that anger out of my mom. Out of all that happened in that week in a weird way I still felt pretty cool for that since it was a fun story to tell to the class. So I am glad to say that was the dumbest, scariest, and coolest thing I ever done.

Minimum Wages During 21st Century America - 1649 Words

Minimum Wages in 21st Century America In the United States the time has come for the next president to be elected and the political fervor has come early this year with an unconventional, surprisingly interesting primary race. With the coming of a new commander in chief the incessant grilling of the candidates has begun and issues, such as poverty in the United States, are being given the national spot light during debates. The issue of poverty has recently gained traction among citizens as well as politicians, and to the credit of the activists behind the increase in outspoken rhetoric gaining increased traction. When each of the politicians on their respective stages discussed the issue at hand, the validity of the problem heightened. This has created minimum wage as its own political issue, which has moved it away from being a suggestion for a problem into a problem of its own. Minimum wage is a flawed approach to the ever expanding problem of poverty. Actions will be taken to battle poverty, however, minimum wage is not the best direction for America to proceed in. A higher minimum wage does more harm than good, hurting the American economy, increasing the price of needed goods, and raising unemployment. Minimum wage, designed to lower the amount of people below the poverty line, doesn’t deliver the promises bundled along. Raising the minimum wage depends on the idea that mass majority of people who are living under the poverty line depend solely on the revenue obtainedShow MoreRelatedGeorge Orwell s Down And Out Essay2254 Words   |  10 Pages Ever since the 20th century, poverty exists in various of well developed countries, many individuals live under no shelter and suffer starvation. Although having a job can support their basics of living, working many hours also affect their health both mentally and physically. 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