Resilience at the sharp end – a description of nurses' capability to create safety
(2012) FLMU06 20121Division of Fire Safety Engineering
Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
- Abstract (Swedish)
- A large part of the hunt for safety within the healthcare domain seems to be about hunting errors and
trying to develop barriers to prevent similar errors in the future, learning from errors. People are seen as
the liability and they should try harder to be safe. This study focuses on trying to understand how
nurses create safety within the work instead of looking at the errors produced, learning from creating
safety. With more descriptions of how nurses recover or step back from danger we are able to provide
nurses on all levels from undergraduates to experts with important information on how safety is created
on the sharp end and therefore enhance patient safety. The benefit of looking at things that go right
rather than... (More) - A large part of the hunt for safety within the healthcare domain seems to be about hunting errors and
trying to develop barriers to prevent similar errors in the future, learning from errors. People are seen as
the liability and they should try harder to be safe. This study focuses on trying to understand how
nurses create safety within the work instead of looking at the errors produced, learning from creating
safety. With more descriptions of how nurses recover or step back from danger we are able to provide
nurses on all levels from undergraduates to experts with important information on how safety is created
on the sharp end and therefore enhance patient safety. The benefit of looking at things that go right
rather than looking at errors is that the frequency of things that goes right is significantly higher.
Resilience engineering, this study’s backbone, is aiming to increase the number of events that go right
rather than reducing the things that go wrong.
This qualitative study based on nine individual interviews with nurses, working at an intensive care
unit, shows that nurses have a broad understanding of risks associated with daily practice. The risks
described the interviewed nurses are associated with the system, patient care and with nurses own
person and knowledge. Nurses do recognize several conflicting goals affecting practice and decisions.
Safety is described in a rich and broad way. Safety is created through knowledge, by doing and by
being. The results show that nurses need to know a lot in order to be safe. They have to do many things
in order to keep the practice safe and they have to have different qualities in order to be a safe nurse.
The findings in this study should not be generalized without taking all the background information and
the study’s context into consideration. Being able to reproduce and teach how safety is created would
enhance safety. In order to be safer within health care we need to know much more about why things
most often go right than wrong in circumstances that are full with risks and danger. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/2968444
- author
- Nyström, Patrik Holger LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- FLMU06 20121
- year
- 2012
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- FLMU06
- language
- English
- id
- 2968444
- date added to LUP
- 2012-11-12 11:00:24
- date last changed
- 2014-03-10 10:40:42
@misc{2968444, abstract = {{A large part of the hunt for safety within the healthcare domain seems to be about hunting errors and trying to develop barriers to prevent similar errors in the future, learning from errors. People are seen as the liability and they should try harder to be safe. This study focuses on trying to understand how nurses create safety within the work instead of looking at the errors produced, learning from creating safety. With more descriptions of how nurses recover or step back from danger we are able to provide nurses on all levels from undergraduates to experts with important information on how safety is created on the sharp end and therefore enhance patient safety. The benefit of looking at things that go right rather than looking at errors is that the frequency of things that goes right is significantly higher. Resilience engineering, this study’s backbone, is aiming to increase the number of events that go right rather than reducing the things that go wrong. This qualitative study based on nine individual interviews with nurses, working at an intensive care unit, shows that nurses have a broad understanding of risks associated with daily practice. The risks described the interviewed nurses are associated with the system, patient care and with nurses own person and knowledge. Nurses do recognize several conflicting goals affecting practice and decisions. Safety is described in a rich and broad way. Safety is created through knowledge, by doing and by being. The results show that nurses need to know a lot in order to be safe. They have to do many things in order to keep the practice safe and they have to have different qualities in order to be a safe nurse. The findings in this study should not be generalized without taking all the background information and the study’s context into consideration. Being able to reproduce and teach how safety is created would enhance safety. In order to be safer within health care we need to know much more about why things most often go right than wrong in circumstances that are full with risks and danger.}}, author = {{Nyström, Patrik Holger}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Student Paper}}, title = {{Resilience at the sharp end – a description of nurses' capability to create safety}}, year = {{2012}}, }