Fostering Patient Safety: Importance of Nursing Documentation

Background: Nurses are professionally accountable for assessing and documenting patients’ vital signs. Nurses failing to fulfill this responsibility position their patients at risk. This paper presents two real-life cases pertaining to patients’ safety resulting in fatal outcomes, leading to the professional, legal, and ethical liability of nurses as the providers of patient care. Objective: This paper focuses on the role of organizational culture in fostering patient safety specifically in monitoring and documentation of patients’ vital signs and early recognition of warning signs. Methodology: A comprehensive literature search was conducted using various databases, examining the significance of vital signs monitoring and documentation and early warning signs in patient safety. Relevant articles combining quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed. Results: By fostering an environment of honest reporting, healthcare organizations can enhance patient safety and improve the quality of care. This paper offers valuable insights and recommendations for developing effective strategies aligned with organizational policies and protocols. Conclusion: This paper serves as a valuable resource, encouraging healthcare professionals to reflect on their practices and the organizations to assess their contributions to creating a culture of safety. It also highlights the importance of reporting and disclosing adverse events as learning opportunities and outlines the role of ethics, professionalism, legislation, and organizational support in achieving patient safety.

Characteristics of wave amplitude and currents in South China Sea induced by a virtual extreme tsunami

This paper investigates the potential extreme tsunami hazards of the worst case scenario of the magnitude M_w=9.30 in South China Sea（SCS）as the Manila Trench is becoming one of the most hazardous tsunami source regions.Using nonlinear shallow water equations model,the time series of surface elevation,arrival time,spatial distributions of maximum wave amplitude and velocity distribution are presented.The characteristics of wave and currents are analyzed.The numerical results indicate that most of the energy of tsunami wave distributes in central and north part of SCS.The offshore regions around SCS will be influenced significantly by the tsunami currents generated by an earthquake in the Manila subduction zone.The maximum wave amplitude near Guangdong Province,Hainan Island,and Taiwan Island exceeds 4 m and velocities at the majority of measured locations near coast exceeds 2 m/s.Nested grid with high resolution is used to study the impacts of the tsunami on Hainan Island,Taiwan Island,and Lingding Bay.The regions with high hazard risk due to strong currents are identified.Finally,a fast tsunami warning method in SCS is developed and discussed,which can provide tsunami warning information in 5 min.