First of all I want to thank all the faculty and sponsors of the Telluride Patient Safety Summer Camp for a wonderful and unforgettable experience. I purposely waited to post my final blog, as I wanted an opportunity to go back to work and to begin to share my experiences with my fellow nurses. I knew some of the concepts taught at the conference would be foreign to a lot of the nurses but I was surprised that it was also foreign to some of our managers. It goes to show that the kind of cultural changes that being a HRO would take would indeed be quite the undertaking. I have yet to meet with the director but from the response I have received so far I’m hopeful that we would be willing to adapt at least some of the concepts.
Over 100 years ago Florence Nightingale defined nursing as “the act of utilizing the patient’s environment to assist in his recovery.” Patient centered care it would seem then is the foundation of the nursing profession. Unfortunately we often time leave the patient out of the recovery planning. There are so many takeaways from the Telluride Summer Camp but I believe if all of us as healthcare professionals center the care we give on the safety and well being of the patient, then healthcare may very soon be the efficient, well-oiled machine it should be. I will be forever be grateful for the opportunity and I am a better nurse for it.