The importance of applying human factors to nursing practice.

The aim of this series is to introduce the topic of human factors and to show how it can be used in nursing practice on the ward and in nursing management, to improve the safety of patient care. Human factors can be used to make many aspects of working life easier, and if it is easier to do it is less likely to go wrong. This article discusses the importance of human factors in nursing and provides some practical suggestions on how to apply the principles of human factors.

Measuring the safety climate in NHS organisations.

This article discusses the differences between organisational culture and organisational climate, and provides an overview of the relationship between safety culture and safety climate within these wider concepts. The article concludes with a brief description of an initiative to test a safety climate measurement tool for use in NHS organisations.

Investigating the role and impact of expert nurses.

This literature review was conducted to identify the attributes of an expert nurse and the direct and indirect impact they have on patient care, health-care organisations and nursing. Given the loss of expert nursing posts as a result of NHS deficits, there is an urgent need to differentiate between a range of expert nursing roles and how these contribute to positive patient and health outcomes and organisational efficiency. The focus of the literature search was on developments in the UK and the results indicated that ambiguity and confusion exist around the terminology and definitions associated with expert nurses.

Challenges in delivering safe patient care: a commentary on a quality improvement initiative.

The specific aim of this commentary is to identify the challenges identified by nurses in the delivery of safe patient care. In reporting, some of the messages emanating from the research and policy literature, the paper highlights the importance of taking a system approach to the investigation of patient safety failures, the conflicting evidence relating to patient deaths as a result of failures in safety, and the underlying importance of culture. The paper outlines the reasons why patient safety has become so prominent, and provides a brief description of some of the definitions and terminology in current use.

Quality of care: a comparison of perceptions of health professionals in clinical areas in the United Kingdom and the United States.

A tool was developed, using the nominal group and Delphi techniques, to explore healthcare staff's perceptions of the quality of hospital care provided in the United Kingdom compared with a tool from the United States. Similarities were identified in many core areas; however, there were several differences between the UK and US tools. This article identifies the process and findings and discusses possible reasons for similarities and differences between the tools.

The nursing view of clinical governance.

This article outlines the findings from three RCN discussion groups, which aimed to gain an understanding of how nurses were responding to clinical governance and to what extent they were involved in its implementation. The article focuses mainly on the third round with clinical nursing staff, senior managers and clinical governance facilitators. Three key issues were reported by nurses taking part in all three rounds of discussion groups.