Pursuing patient safety
- Correspondence to: Ms B Malone Royal College of Nursing, 20 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0RN, UK; julia.mountainrcn.org.uk
Role of nurses in improving the quality of care
Whether you work as a nurse in the US, the UK, or elsewhere in the world, you will be familiar with the often quoted words of Florence Nightingale (1869): “First do [the patient] no harm”. Reflecting upon the fundamentals of good nursing, Nightingale was in no doubt that the moral, professional, and individual responsibility of nurses was to ensure that no unintentional harm came to the patients in their care.
Those of us familiar with Nightingale’s influence would also be aware that her understanding of patient safety extended far beyond the individual behaviour, knowledge, and skill of the nurse. She wrote widely about the need for effective hygiene and sanitation, good food, lighting and ventilation in hospitals; effective administration; the collection and use of routine statistics; and strong leadership. Nightingale was not only the first nurse—she was the first nurse researcher.1
It is chastening to realise that, more than a century later, we are still striving to understand how we can improve …
