NR361 Week 6 Discussion Question, Detractors in our Environments (Latest Update) Already Graded A+

NR361 Week 6 Discussion Question, Detractors in our Environments Welcome to the Week 6 discussion. In this week’s discussion, we are going to discussion distractors in our environment. Distractions are everywhere. They may include cellphones, the alarms sounding for multiple different reasons, overhead paging, monitors beeping, and staff interrupting our thoughts. Give an example of an ethical or legal issue that may arise if a patient has a poor outcome or sentinel event because of a distraction such as alarm fatigue. What does evidence reveal about alarm fatigue and distraction when it comes to patient safety? I am looking forward to our discussion this week as I believe this is a very important topic and really can impact patient care and safety. The American Association of Critical Care Nurses (2017) states that research demonstrates that 72% to 99% of clinical alarms are false. Because of this, and due to the high number of alarms, nurses eventually suffer from sensory fatigue. When healthcare staff are exposed to these alarms, eventually the excessive number of alarms desensitizes the nurse and causes them to miss alarms. Distraction in general can affect a nurse, personally, when I was first out of orientation as a new nurse, I was under pressure running around. Two of my seven patients were fall risks and had dementia, two patients were max assists, and the other three were requiring pain medications every two hours on the dot. The shift had started out kind of hectic because I got report from 3 different nurses which were split, so I began my medication pass very late like at 2030. Anyway, I was halfway through medication pass when I walked into one of my patient rooms ( he was AAOX4), to find the patient had pulled out his IV, there was feces and blood all over the floor, the walls, the bedrails, the IV pole, and the sheets. He was naked sitting on the edge of the bed. I called my CNA and we both began cleaning the room, and situating the patient in a safe/clean environment. By the time housekeeping arrived to finish off the cleaning process, my CNA and I had already performed a bed bath. I told the patient I would return as soon as I finished medicating the rest of the patients to initiate an IV. I finally finished with everything and as I am searching for a vein, the charge nurse peeks her head in and tells me to hurry and chart because systems will be going down in one hour. I started the IV on the first attempt and began to infuse the ordered fluids. On my hourly roundings the patient complained that his arm was hurting, and I assessed his arm but noted nothing out of place and the night shift provider did not want to order anything for mild pain. During shift change, I notified the nurse that he needed orders for pain medication and for her to check out his arm in case I had missed something. The chaos had carried over from my shift to hers so her morning was off to a slow start. To make a long story short, at 1300 a phlebotomist was searching for a vein and discovered the tourniquet still tied to the patient’s arm. The IV had been initiated at midnight! The patient had a DVT and was placed on Heparin. I had to do my first incident report. Ever since then, I have tried to handle one thing at a time because even if it is not alarms or cellphones, distractions are distractions and they can knock you out of your train of thought. Reference American Association of Critical Care Nurses. (2017). American Association of Critical Care Nurses. Retrieved from Alarm Fatigue: A Patient Safety Concern: