Situational Awareness
Situational awareness can generally be described as being aware of what is going on in your surrounding environment (Meditskos, 2017). It is practised and has been adopted in many organizations since this knowledge gives the edge of operations workers within an organization the required information to pursue their work effectively. Situational awareness is a critical concept in the healthcare field since it reduces the risk of safety-sensitive activities. With nursing being amongst the popular components in the healthcare industry they need to adopt the concept due to the nature of their performance in assessments and interventions, which has a direct effect on the patient’s outcomes.
Situational awareness is a term that dates back in the world war ages. It is vastly used in different organizations. It is described by Fore as someone’s perception of the elements within their environment and the projection of their status in the future (Fore, 2016). There are three defining attributes of this concept, these are; perception, comprehension and projection. An example of a model case would be when a nurse checks up on a post-operative patient and realizes that the patient seems to be slightly dusky in colour. The nurse hence hurriedly collects the vital signs and provides Oxygen due to low saturation. Such quick reaction and comprehension of a situation lead to a positive outcome for the patient. According to Fore and Sculli, information processing and cognitive ability are the major antecedents, although training and education also enhance situational awareness. The consequences associated with this concept include adverse events and poor outcomes.
Situational awareness has been continuously growing within the medical field, although the concept cannot be learned within a short period it is still essential for organizations to adopt it into their policy since it will lead to better outcomes for the patients. When incorporated with nursing knowledge nurses will be able to quickly interpret adverse situations and respond appropriately.
References
Fore, A. & Sculli, G. (2013) A concept analysis of situational awareness in nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing 69(12), 2613-2621.
Meditskos, G., & Kompatsiaris, I. (2017). iKnow: Ontology-driven situational awareness for the recognition of activities of daily living. Pervasive and Mobile Computing, 40, 17-41.