I am truly grateful for all the knowledge I gained in today’s discussions on patient safety. As I sat and watched the video Lewis Blackman, I became emotional. Fear, anger, sadness, I think I felt them all. I can only imagine how Ms. Blackman felt in the hospital room helplessly watching her son suffering. I remember Ms. Blackman saying in the video the medical staff was only interested in completing tasks. No one cared about her or her son. I believe we have lost site of the main reason many of us went into health care, caring for our patients. I have seen similar situations happen too often in my career. As health care workers, we have so many tasks to complete and hoops to jump through that we are often married to the computer screen. We look at numbers and don’t listen and/or look at the whole patient. When we lose sight of our patients we place our patients and ourselves at risk for adverse events. I will be able to use the knowledge I have gained today in my own practice. Most importantly I will be able to pass this knowledge onto my nursing students to improve patient safety in the future.
