Elizabeth A. Henneman

Surveillance is a nursing intervention that has been identified as an important strategy in preventing and identifying medical errors and adverse events. The definition of surveillance proposed by the Nursing Intervention Classification is the purposeful and ongoing acquisition, interpretation, and synthesis of patient data for clinical decision making. The term surveillance is often used interchangeably with the term monitoring, yet surveillance differs significantly from monitoring both in purpose and scope. Monitoring is a key activity in the surveillance process, but monitoring alone is insufficient for conducting effective surveillance. Much of the attention in the bedside patient safety movement has been focused on efforts to implement processes that ultimately improve the surveillance process. These include checklists, interdisciplinary rounds, clinical information systems, and clinical decision support systems. To identify optimal surveillance patterns and to develop and test technologies that assist critical care nurses in performing effective surveillance, more research is needed, particularly with innovative approaches to describe and evaluate the best surveillance practices of bedside nurses.

Background Medical errors are common in intensive care units. Nurses are uniquely positioned to identify, interrupt, and correct medical errors and to minimize preventable adverse outcomes. Nurses are increasingly recognized as playing a role in reducing medical errors, but only recently have their error-recovery strategies been described. Objectives To describe error-recovery strategies used by critical care nurses. Methods Data were collected by audio taping focus groups with 20 nurses from 5 critical care units at 2 urban university medical centers and 2 community hospitals on the East and West coasts of the United States. Transcript content was analyzed as recommended by Krueger and Casey. Results Analysis of focus group data revealed that nurses in critical care settings use 17 strategies to identify, interrupt, and correct errors. Nurses used 8 strategies to identify errors: knowing the patient, knowing the “players,” knowing the plan of care, surveillance, knowing policy/procedure, double-checking, using systematic processes, and questioning. Nurses used 3 strategies to interrupt errors: offering assistance, clarifying, and verbally interrupting. Nurses used 6 strategies to correct errors: persevering, being physically present, reviewing or confirming the plan of care, offering options, referencing standards or experts, and involving another nurse or physician. Conclusions These results reflect the pivotal role that critical care nurses play in the recovery of medical errors and ensuring patient safety. Several error-recovery strategies identified in this study were also reported by emergency nurses, providing further empirical support for nurses’ role in the recovery of medical errors as proposed in the Eindhoven model.

Adverse drug events are common in the intensive care unit setting. Despite the existence of many long-standing safety principles (such as the “five rights”) and new mechanisms to promote medication safety, there is still a gap between practice and the goal of patient safety. This is the result of the many human and system factors that impact care delivery. Research supports the role of the nurse as having a positive impact on patient outcomes. Future research requires the evaluation of new strategies and technologies to support safe medication administration. For example, patient simulation is being used to teach student and novice nurses principles of medication administration in a “safe” setting that more closely resembles the clinical environment. The Institute of Nursing repeatedly has stressed the need to address the organizational, technical, and human issues that impact patient safety, with an emphasis on the need to transform the nurse work environment to keep patients safe. This transformation will require a new level of interdisciplinary research and nursing involvement to address better care for our patients and, in particular, reduce adverse drug events.

The use of human patient simulation as a teaching methodology for nursing students has become popular. Using human patient simulation effectively demands paying careful attention to the details of the simulation, debriefing, and evaluation processes. Our experience in designing simulation experiences and evaluating student behaviors confirms the resource-intensive nature of human patient simulation and the need for clear, measurable objectives. When used properly, human patient simulation offers a unique opportunity to teach nursing students important patient safety principles.

This paper presents an evaluation of the Eindhoven Classification Model for categorizing healthcare errors. The ability to decrease healthcare errors will depend on an understanding of the types and patterns of error that occur in various settings. Research addressing the systematic classification of error is in its infancy. The sample for this study was two existing sets of healthcare error reports obtained from the emergency department of a regional trauma center. Study data were collected in the summer of 2001 and 2002. The errors in these reports were categorized using a coding tool based on the Eindhoven Classification Model. In addition to testing for inter-rater reliability, the classification model was also evaluated for the number of unclassifiable errors and of categories never selected by the raters (not useful to the error classification model). Our findings of poor inter-rater reliability, large numbers of unclassifiable errors and categories not selected, suggest that the Eindhoven Classification Model, in its current form, cannot be applied to categorizing healthcare errors in an emergency department setting. Further study is needed to develop and test error categorization models for use in emergency departments and other healthcare settings.