Evidence-Based Nursing Protocols
Introduction
Healthcare organizations engage in diverse activities ranging from emergency services to inpatient activities such as ICU services. For these activities to flow effortlessly, they require procedures that enhance the day-to-day operations. Therefore, there is a need for protocols to help in the decision-making process. Nurses use these protocols so assist them in better diagnosis, treatment, and care provision. Moreover, these procedures are used to incorporate patients’ preferences in the treatment program to ensure they receive safe and quality healthcare (Asnaani, Gallagher, & Foa, 2018).
Nursing protocols are designed to help in meeting the needs of patients. A lack of adherence to these protocols can put the patient’s health at risk. Nursing protocols define how a nurse should respond to a particular situation (Kim & Bates, 2013). Protocols provide guidelines on assessment procedures, establishes the code of conduct, and the right treatment for patients, which includes how drugs administration. Protocols also provide communication procedures. Communication procedures are essential, mainly when patients are not able to express themselves (Asnaani, Gallagher, & Foa, 2018).
Nursing protocols are a written document that provides for how patient care should be carried out. Two of the evidence-based nursing protocols include medication administration and infection control in healthcare facilities. Nurses are provided with procedures that guide on how to administer drugs to patients and how to calculate the right dosage using weighs. Establishing infection control protocols helps reduce the risk of patients becoming infected while seeking services in health care facilities (Kim, & Bates, 2013).
Medication Administration
Drug administration is one of the most common procedures that nurses have to carry out. Drug administration is a tedious and time-consuming procedure, and thus the reason there are frequent medication errors(Kim, & Bates, 2013). Each facility has its own set of processes that nurses must follow the policies formulated by the organization should be memorized and understood by nurses. This means that nurses should be highly trained and competent enough when carrying out the procedure of drug administration (Kim, & Bates, 2013).
Nurses should educate patients about the drugs that are being administered to them while educating patients; nurses should ensure that they brief patients on the purpose of the medicine or what it aims to treat. Nurses should illustrate to the patients on the dosage; it is also imperative for the nurses to educate the patients on the possible side effect of the drug being administered. Nurses are also required to inform the patient on how to dispose of medicines that have expired, and this helps ensure the patients do not suffer from poisons that may arise by the administration of drugs that have expired(Haque et al., 2018).
Nurses should be trained on the right procedures to be carried during medication administration, and nurses should be conversant with rights that help in the quality drug administration process (Kim, & Bates, 2013). These rights include; right medication, right dosage, the right time as per the physicians’ direction as well as the frequency, the right patient, the correct route, the right education to the patients, right documentation, right to correct assessment and evaluation. Nurses should also ensure that the drugs are kept safe; it also important also for the nurses to know about patients’ allergies and any other incompatibilities that may arise during the administration of medications.
Nurses should also be trained on the routes and various forms of medication, drugs are manufactured and given instructions on how best to administer them. This is important for the nurses to understand as they are often the ones who are in direct contact with patients. It is also crucial for the nurse to understand drugs, especially those with several routes of administration. Also, it is important to understand the various formulations. The various formulations include; tablets, capsules, ointments creams, and paste. Nurses should be trained on the recommended route of administration, such as the intravenous route, subcutaneous route, oral route administering through the mouth, topical route, and nasal method of administration (Kim, & Bates, 2013).
During the administration of drugs, nurses should apply some considerations such as age factors. When administering medications to infants, some sites of injections are not yet fully developed, thus the need to use alternative injection sites. During the administration of a drug to toddlers, nurses should use spoons and cups for oral medication; it is also important to add flavors. Since the muscles are developed, toddlers have several sites of injections compared to infants. The school-going children are a bit older and can take tablets and capsules for oral medication at this stage; the dosage is based on their weight. In adolescents, the dosage should be similar to adults, but when it comes to older people, dosage may be reduced due to aging (Asnaani, Gallagher & Foa, 2018).
Nurses are trained to ensure that the medication order is correct; this is possible from the data that they collect and also the use of critical thinking. The data includes the patient’s name, the drug to be administered, and the route through which the medication should be administered. It is also crucial to establish the time and even the physician’s name should the order to raise some issues during the process of administration. The use of critical thinking is essential as it eliminates any potential errors that may occur during medication. Nurses should be able to analyze any issue that may arise during medication and use professional discretion to provide quality health (Asnaani, Gallagher & Foa, 2018).
Infection Control
Infection control is a method used to control and prevent infections that may occur in a healthcare setting. Infection control aims at controlling those infections that occur in a hospital. Those forms of infection that arise are; infections among patients, an infection passed from patients to staff, and vice versa and infection among the staff members (Mathur, 2011). However, some measures have been put in place to deal with the infection, and they include washing of hands, cleaning the surfaces, disinfecting the surfaces, and vaccinating patients from diseases.
Nurses should be aware of how diseases are spread in a hospital; germs are known to be the cause of infection. Germs are everywhere; thus the need to address how they spread, for infection to take place three things must be present, these conditions are; there must be a source, there must be a susceptible person, and there has to be a transmission. The source of infection is germs, which include viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms. These germs rely on people to have a place to attach themselves; people may consist of patients, the staff, and people visiting the sick at the hospital. Another type of source is the environmental source, which includes surfaces or other materials such as dust (Mathur, 2011).
Infections must have a susceptible host to multiply and manifest an illness; most germs gain entry to a person, especially people who are not immune. Hospitals are advised to have their staff vaccinated as they often transmit the infection; use of certain devices such as catheters, which provide a route of entry, the nurse should be trained to prevent the spread of disease. Transmission is the other component of how an infection spreads; it is referred to as how an infection is spread through germs, as germs cannot move by themselves and have to rely upon ion people and surfaces to transmit an infection (Asnaani, Gallagher & Foa, 2018).
Hospitals rely on certain precautions to control the spread of infection; these precautions must be adhered to by nurses. They bear huge responsibility in the spread of germs from one place to another and from one patient to another. These precautions include; standard precautions for all patient care and the transmission-based precautions. Standard precautions for all patient care are based on analyzing the risk and applying practices and equipment that limit the spread of infection. Common practices include washing hands and promoting respiratory hygiene; nurses should follow safe injection practices (Mathur, 2011). These practices, and also wearing protective gear, help in controlling the infection.
Transmission-based precautions complement standard precautions and help in controlling the spread of infection. These precaution measures include isolation precaution, which ensures that sick patients should be placed in isolation rooms to prevent the spread of an infection in a hospital. Other precautionary measures include the appropriate use of protective gear, which provides for gloves and masks, which is also subject to proper disposal of the equipment reducing the risk of spreading the infection. Nurses should also ensure that there is limited movement of patients from and within hospitals. Nurses should ensure that rooms are clean and disinfected to reduce the spread of infection (Haque et al., 2018).
Conclusion
Medication protocols are applied so that nurses know how to handle patients and the drugs, meanwhile, infection controls are meant to give nurses the necessary guidelines and procedures to be undertaken to reduce the risk of a disease to spread. Medication administration protocols are based on assessing the risk of an error occurring during administration; however, infection control protocols are based on analyzing the risk of an infection spreading across the hospital. Both protocols are important since they ensure that patients get quality and safe healthcare in a healthcare setting and that the nurses have been trained properly when it comes to providing healthcare (Dols et al., 2017).
References
Asnaani, A., Gallagher, T., & Foa, E. B. (2018). Evidence‐based protocols: Merits, drawbacks, and potential solutions. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 25(4), e12266.
Dols, J. D., Muñoz, L. R., Martinez, S. S., Mathers, N., Miller, P. S., Pomerleau, T. A., … & White, S. (2017). Developing policies and protocols in the age of evidence-based practice. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 48(2), 87-92.
Haque, M., Sartelli, M., McKimm, J., & Bakar, M. A. (2018). Healthcare-associated infections–an overview. Infection and drug resistance, 11, 2321.
Kim, J., & Bates, D. W. (2013). Medication administration errors by nurses: adherence to guidelines. Journal of clinical nursing, 22(3-4), 590-598.
Mathur, P. (2011). Hand hygiene: back to the basics of infection control. The Indian journal of medical research, 134(5), 611