Consequently, Registered Nurses are often faced with situations in which they cannot render safe care to patients, resulting in actual or potential harm. This inability to provide safe care may manifest itself in many ways, big or small. Often it is only major complications, such as patient death or disability, that hospitals investigate and measure. Ongoing restructuring continues the further undermining of the ability of RNs to fulfill their legal and moral mandate to act as patient advocates. Fighting Back However, staff nurses have many tools with which to fight back and keep their patients safe.
ADOs provide nurses with a forum to document unsafe assignments that place their patients at risk.
PPCs are contractually created facility-based committees of staff nurses charged with examining practice issues and making recommendations for change. PPCs use ADOs as one of their primary data collection tools. In many instances, ADOs have provided data that has allowed the PPC to identify problems, focus issues and construct solutions. With this data, the PPC has been able to propose changes to improve patient care and to organize the direct care nurses around patient safety and advocacy issues. The PPC, through examination of the ADOs, has also been able to identify in-service and staff education needs, resulting in better care for patients.