You can improve risk awareness and empower individuals to use available basic risk-management strategies. First, acknowledge that nurses who perform ambulance transports risk injury and death in an ambulance accident. Nurses can control some of these risks, but they may hesitate to assert their control until they recognize that their lives are as important as their patients' lives, and equally worthy of protection from unnecessary risk during transports. They must understand that their safety is far more important than the cost of the transport, the need to rapidly return the ambulance to service, or the receiving physician's convenience. Nurses can use statements from professional organizations or government agencies to support this personal protection strategy.
Employers also can stress that they expect nurses to wear seat belts whenever possible.
While events in the ambulance vary with each patient transport, studies, policy statements, and other literature clearly demonstrate that caregivers don't wear safety restraints as often as they could. Nurse leaders must expect nurses to maximize their safety using the available tools as an important step to increase implementing these measures. Since laws require that caregivers stabilize patients before transporting them to other facilities, fewer transported patients are unstable. Nurses can distinguish between a critically ill but stable patient, and one whose unstable condition has the high probability of death that justifies speeding and running traffic lights. Empower them to use their knowledge and authority to assess the patient's condition and to direct ambulance drivers on which driving tactics to use.