Practice Implications of Keeping Patients Safe

The report’s message and recommendations for building safer systems of care delivery across the entire U.S. health care system primarily addressed the changes needed at the fourth level of the health Care system—where policy, payment, regulation, accreditation, and similar external factors shape the delivery of health care.

Abstract

Nurses are in a key position to improve patient safety, not just through their individual patient care actions as clinicians, but by exercising their leverage as much-desired employees in the labor marketplace. If nurses ask the above questions of their prospective employers, and incorporate the responses they receive into their selection of their place of employment, they will be able to exert significant influence within the health care system, as health care organizations come to appreciate the ability to recruit nurses as an additional important reason for making the types of organizational changes needed to provide safe patient care.