Transformational leadership in nursing and medication safety education: a discussion paper

Abstract

Aims: This paper discusses the application of transformational leadership to the teaching and learning of safe medication management. Background:The prevalence of adverse drug events (ADEs) and medication-related hospitalizations (100,000 each year in the USA) are of concern.

The Effectiveness of a Course on Patient Safety Management on the Patient Safety Competencies by Final Year Bachelor of Nursing Students in the Netherlands

“…At least, students reported that in their clinical learning setting, they perceived their impact on patient care outcomes. Also, they highlighted the need for a more combined approach to theoretical and clinical education such as, supportive learning environments with concentration on systems-based approaches to prevent errors, based on team work and systematically learning from and preventing errors [2,12]. Despite, a remarkable relapse in working in teams and management of adverse events are identified during the progress of the academic nursing program [9].…”

“…Vaismoradi et al [12] argues, the nurse education, in both academic and clinical settings, can serve as a role model for socialisation and can enhance student willingness to collaborate and teach one another. Thus, in order to allow nursing students to learn how to prevent and handle adverse events it is important that they are able to work with experts from both academic and clinical setting [16].…”

“…Adverse drug events (ADEs) account for nearly 100 000 emergency department visits and 700 000 hospitalisations each year in the USA, 5-8% of unplanned hospital admissions in the UK, and 2-3% of all admissions in Australia. Medication errors and health care related adverse events occurs in 8-12% of all hospital admissions in the European Union Member States [12]. In 2011, the WHO launched the Evidence-based recommendations for embedding patient safety in nursing education based on the WHO Multiple-professional Patient Safety Curriculum Guide [2,16].…”

“…To describe the required educational interventions, several models based on the required competencies of nursing-students have been developed [12]. For example, patient safety competencies could be assessed by final year baccalaureate nursing students by the self-reported…”

“…Medication errors mostly are preventable events that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health-care professional, patient or consumer [12]. Medication errors have been found to be due to the result of human factors, whereby performance and knowledge deficiencies were found to be two major factors for errors among nurses [5].…”