The patient errors you described are indeed tragic, yet they are largely unavoidable in a health care system downsized, restructured and reorganized to the point where patients are increasingly at risk. Nurses are an important part of the solution not the problem. It is indisputable that patient outcomes are better in hospitals with higher staffing levels and higher ratios of registered nurses in the staffing mix. Nurses are fiercely committed to quality health care for their patients yet they are often powerless to provide the kind of care patients deserve. While nurses like other health care providers do make mistakes, they are the patient's greatest advocate in a health care system fraught with problems.
Nurses are the first point of contact and the last line of defense for most patients.
They connect members of the health care team and often provide a vital link between the patient and his family. The majority of patient errors result from unsafe systems, not incompetence. Inadequate and inappropriate staffing, insufficient training in new technologies, clinical research and practice have created situations where a nursing workforce may be ill equipped to provide the quality of care patients need. We are just beginning to feel the effects of a nursing shortage of devastating proportions, which may placenurses and patients at even greater risk. Measures such as mandatory overtime merely exacerbate the problem with nurses exhausted on their feet and unable to think clearly or make good clinical decisions.