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Resilience at the sharp end – a description of nurses' capability to create safety

Nyström, Patrik Holger LU (2012) FLMU06 20121
Division 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:
author
Nyström, Patrik Holger LU
supervisor
organization
course
FLMU06 20121
year
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}},
}