Empowering nurses with

biomedical engineering knowledge for patient safety.

Project report by:

Maulik R. Shah
Diploma of Hospital Administration DHA-0910-164In, Mobile : 98240 -19971. Ahmedabad.

UMMARY :

Quality patient care is a fundamental right of a patient.

Quality patient care is achieved by promoting the culture of patient safety. Patient safety is inversely proportional to medical errors (more the errors, less the safety and vice versa). These medical errors can be reduced or prevented by the nurses who are very close to the patients. Thus, the final responsibility of delivering quality patient care lies on the shoulders of the nurses. As nurses play an important role in delivering quality patient care, they have to be competent enough to deal with the clinical, medical equipment & medical device related issues that affect patient safety. I personally believe that it will be unfair to give such a big responsibility to nurses without giving them proper information, training or education to deal with Patient safety related issues. I am therefore suggesting that nurses should be empowered with the knowledge first and then let them take the responsibility of quality patient care and I am confident that they will do their job very well. This idea is similar to this and it is time tested: If you want educated people in the society, you have to start educating the mothers first. Similarly, if you expect quality patient care, you have to improve the quality of the nurses first and I am confident that this can be achieved by EMPOWERING the nurses. This project, Empowering Nurses with Biomedical Engineering knowledge for patient safety, addresses this issue. Finally, my humble effort through this project is to offer biomedical engineering based solutions that if included in the educational curriculum of nursing students, a new breed of empowered nurses will be seen working in our hospitals who will eradicate this lethal man-made disease called Medical Errors. (for more information, please contact me at mailtomaulik@gmail.com)