Patient Safety and Quality

What this unit covers

The resources here circle around keeping patients safe and improving the quality of care. Falls and medication are the busiest themes. You will find several mind maps on fall prevention, a quiz called Fall Prevention, and flashcards on medication errors, safe drug handling and pharmacotherapy. Others look at restraints, patient identification and procedure matching, situational awareness and risk management.

Quality, rights and complaints

Quality is covered from the patient's side too. The slide set on the difference between a complaint and a grievance under CMS guidelines defines a complaint as a verbal communication about care that staff can often resolve straight away. The Clinical Governance flashcards ask what clinical governance is, which documents matter and what its aims are. Several maps cover person centred care, which is used in dementia care and the care of older people and sees the person rather than the illness.

Where to start

1. Begin with the mind maps called Patient Safety and Quality to get the overall picture.
2. Move to the National Patient Safety Goals flashcards and map.
3. Choose a theme, such as falls, medication or restraints, and work through its map and flashcards.
4. Finish with a quiz, such as Safe Meds Practice Quiz or Falls and medication risk factors.

Using quizzes and maps together

Read a map first, then close it and take the matching quiz. Note every question you miss, then go back to the branch of the map that covers it. The falls quiz, for example, asks which risk factors are most likely caused by particular drugs, so it rewards careful reading of medication maps. Teachers can set a map as a starter and a quiz as a check.

Where it fits

This unit sits in the Leadership, Quality and Health Systems strand of Nursing. Some resources follow textbook chapters, while others come from individual course weeks, so pick whichever matches your own course. Open a resource that suits you and start from there.