TY - JOUR
T1 - Education and training of nurses in the use of advanced medical technologies in home care related to patient safety
T2 - A cross-sectional survey
AU - ten Haken, Ingrid
AU - Ben Allouch, Somaya
AU - van Harten, Wim H.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s)
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - Background: To use advanced medical technologies (AMTs) correctly and safely requires both specialist knowledge and skills, and an awareness of risks and how those can be minimized. Reporting safety concerns about AMTs in home care can contribute to an improved quality of care. The extent to which a health care organization has integrated the reporting, evaluation and learning from incidents is a key element of that organization's patient safety culture. Objectives: To explore nurses' experiences regarding the education followed in the use of AMTs in the home setting, and their organizations' systems of reporting. Design: Descriptive cross-sectional design. Methods: 209 home care nurses from across the Netherlands who worked with infusion therapy, parenteral nutrition and/or morphine pumps responded to the online questionnaire between July 2018 and February 2019. The analysis of the data was mainly descriptive. Results: Educational interventions that are most often used to learn how to use AMTs were, as an average over the three AMTs, instruction by a nurse (71%), practical training in the required skills (71%) and acquiring information to increase theoretical knowledge (69%). Considerable attention is paid to patient safety (88%) and the home setting (89%). However, a substantial proportion of the nurses (up to 29%) use AMTs even though they had not been tested on their skills. 95% of the respondents were well acquainted with the incident reporting protocol of their organization, but only 49% received structural or regular feedback on any actions taken as a result of event reporting. Conclusions: This study revealed aspects of nurses' education that imply risk factors for patient safety. Practical training is not always given, additional or retraining is often voluntary, and the required skills are not always tested. However, the results show that nurses do have a good awareness of patient safety. Incidents are mainly discussed within the team, but less at the organizational level.
AB - Background: To use advanced medical technologies (AMTs) correctly and safely requires both specialist knowledge and skills, and an awareness of risks and how those can be minimized. Reporting safety concerns about AMTs in home care can contribute to an improved quality of care. The extent to which a health care organization has integrated the reporting, evaluation and learning from incidents is a key element of that organization's patient safety culture. Objectives: To explore nurses' experiences regarding the education followed in the use of AMTs in the home setting, and their organizations' systems of reporting. Design: Descriptive cross-sectional design. Methods: 209 home care nurses from across the Netherlands who worked with infusion therapy, parenteral nutrition and/or morphine pumps responded to the online questionnaire between July 2018 and February 2019. The analysis of the data was mainly descriptive. Results: Educational interventions that are most often used to learn how to use AMTs were, as an average over the three AMTs, instruction by a nurse (71%), practical training in the required skills (71%) and acquiring information to increase theoretical knowledge (69%). Considerable attention is paid to patient safety (88%) and the home setting (89%). However, a substantial proportion of the nurses (up to 29%) use AMTs even though they had not been tested on their skills. 95% of the respondents were well acquainted with the incident reporting protocol of their organization, but only 49% received structural or regular feedback on any actions taken as a result of event reporting. Conclusions: This study revealed aspects of nurses' education that imply risk factors for patient safety. Practical training is not always given, additional or retraining is often voluntary, and the required skills are not always tested. However, the results show that nurses do have a good awareness of patient safety. Incidents are mainly discussed within the team, but less at the organizational level.
KW - Home care
KW - Medical technologies
KW - Nursing education
KW - Patient safety
KW - Risk management
KW - Survey research
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101668574&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.nedt.2021.104813
DO - 10.1016/j.nedt.2021.104813
M3 - Article
C2 - 33662675
AN - SCOPUS:85101668574
VL - 100
JO - Nurse Education Today
JF - Nurse Education Today
SN - 0260-6917
M1 - 104813
ER -