"The informative, well-organized content emphasizes the pivotal position nurses have in relation to patient
safety. The report speaks to how the experience of patients should change, how teams of health care workers should
interact, how health care organizations can better design work and institute proactive error-reduction strategies,
and how policy officials and health care purchasers can reshape health policy for a safer environment. This evidence-based,
moderately priced work contains an executive summary that comprehensively summarizes its contents. Recommended
for graduate students and health care professionals; highly recommended for health care leaders."
--CHOICE
"This important report has implications for all nurses..."
--AORN Journal
From the National Academy of Sciences Web site, April, 2005
Summary
Building on the revolutionary Institute of Medicine reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm,
Keeping Patients Safe lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses working conditions and
demands.
Licensed nurses and unlicensed nursing assistants are critical participants in our national effort to protect patients
from health care errors. The nature of the activities nurses typically perform monitoring patients, educating home
caretakers, performing treatments, and rescuing patients who are in crisis provides an indispensable resource in
detecting and remedying error-producing defects in the U.S. health care system.
During the past two decades, substantial changes have been made in the organization and delivery of health care
and consequently in the job description and work environment of nurses. As patients are increasingly cared for
as outpatients, nurses in hospitals and nursing homes deal with greater severity of illness. Problems in management
practices, employee deployment, work and workspace design, and the basic safety culture of health care organizations
place patients at further risk.
This newest edition in the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Quality Chasm series discusses the key aspects
of the work environment for nurses and reviews the potential improvements in working conditions that are likely
to have an impact on patient safety.
