Essay Sample on Nurse Educator: Project Aim, Goals, and Patient Safety

Introduction

The main aim of undertaking this project is to achieve the role of a nurse educator. A nurse educator is current or former nurse who teaches as well as prepares licensed practical and registered nurses for entry into practice positions in a nursing school or in a health facility. The goals associated with this project include learning on ways to improve patient safety, understanding and finding ways to deal with patient safety culture issues and finding better practices that reduce infections in the hospital. The site for the project is the Community First Hospital. It consists of four dialysis stations and nine nurses in staffing. This is where I carry out my employment duties and to prevent any conflict between student role and the employee role, I work in different shifts. From seven o'clock in the morning to midday am in for the employee shift then from two o'clock in the afternoon to seven o'clock in the evening I am in for the nurse educator shift. The tasks I perform during both shifts are different in that during the nurse educator shifts I am basically overseeing the nursing students' clinical work. This involves teaching them and checking if they apply it in their daily tasks in the hospital, especially in the dialysis unit.

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Capstone Project

Health care-related infections are a prominent risk to patient and staff safety. Prevention of this hospital-acquired infections is a real challenge in improving safety of the patients and staff in the dialysis unit. The infections occur due to frequent and prolonged exposures to the many possible contaminants in the dialysis environment. The increased risks can be attributed to reasons such as the immune -compromised status of the patients, poor hand hygiene, unhygienic clinical environments such as dirty equipment and stations and non-adherence to recommended practices such as poor sterilization procedures (Karkar, 2018). Therefore, there is a need to improve the safety culture of the dialysis unit which is a basis of excellent health care hence the reason for proposing the project "Transforming the Culture of Safety in the Dialysis unit". In addition to improving safety, the project will assist create an educational program for dialysis facility and establish standards of care for hemodialysis patients promoting control of the infections. To determine success of the project the instrument to be used is a safety survey assessment tool. Surveys will be employed by assessing patient safety and safety culture in the hemodialysis nurse practice setting and it will involve the use of open and close-ended questions. Surveys will be conducted during and after completion of the project. The instruments to be used for survey will be from patient safety assessment tools developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The participants will be asked questions that will answer the specific questions on safety of the hemodialysis unit and share their views hence aid in improvement of safety procedures. Participants will provide any additional information about patients' safety and errors that occur in the hemodialysis facility in order to formulate better safety techniques and better ways to prevent infections (Beth & Kear, 2015). Surveys after the project will determine if the project was a success by assessing if infections reduced by adoption of safety techniques that will be developed after the first survey. Data will be accessed from hospital records involving the number of infections recorded before and after the project.

Interprofessional Team & Resources to Support the Capstone Project

Stakeholders that are critical to the success of this project are the infection control staff and facility's nurse educator who are important to the safety of the hemodialysis unit. Their main undertaking is ensuring all protocols in place at the hospital are designed in fostering infection control and safety is adhered to. In order to complete the project, the resources needed included information technology support for creating the online survey and also accessing Agency for Health Research and Quality database on survey published on safety of the hemodialysis unit. Participants required for the survey are nurses in the hemodialysis unit. They will need to schedule some time to be able to take part in the survey.

Practicum Experience Hours

Simulation training about infection prevention fair will be undertaken to teach nurses on ways to reduce infections to patients and in the hemodialysis laboratory. The nurse educator role immersion activities that will be engaged in during the practicum include, teaching the students how to clean dialysis equipment with the aim of maintaining hygiene. The nurse educator will teach the students on how to attend and assist infected patients. During the practicum, student nurses will also be taught how to prepare trolley for catheter dressing, how to remove dressing over catheter site and how to dress the catheter exit site. The nurse educator will teach students on handling blood samples and specimen to prevent contamination. Students will be taught how to adjust machine parameters and how to attend to alarms (Karkar, 2018). These activities enable the students to understand patient safety through exposure and experience gained on methods that reduce infections in the hospital.

References

Beth, K. T. (2015). Patient Safety and Patient Safety Culture in Nephrology Nurse Practice Settings: Issues, Solutions, and Best Practices. Continuing Nursing, 114.

Karkar, A. (2018). Infection control guidelines in hemodialysis facilities. Kidney Research and Clinical practice, 1.