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Patricia Benner

Publications and source records attributed to Patricia Benner.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2002

Individual, practice, and system causes of errors in nursing: a taxonomy.

Practice errors by nurses can cause harm to patients, families, practitioners, systems, and the profession. Because the nursing errors reported to the State Boards of Nursing are typically serious, analyzing their data has great potential for developing new strategies to reduce dangerous errors. With the guiding rationale being identification of categories central to the nurse's role and function in healthcare delivery errors, 21 case studies of nursing errors from 9 State Boards of Nursing files were analyzed to develop a taxonomy of nursing errors. Eight categories of nursing errors representing a broad range of possible errors and contributive or causative factors were identified: lack of attentiveness; lack of agency/fiduciary concern; inappropriate judgment; lack of intervention on the patient's behalf; medication errors; lack of prevention; missed or mistaken MD/healthcare provider's orders; and documentation errors. Causes for the error, at the system and practice responsibility levels, were identified in each case. The categories, an assessment of causes of errors, and an examination of the remediation actions taken were the first steps in devising a taxonomy of nursing error, designed with prevention in mind. The authors discuss their work and present the taxonomy.

Aged↗
PubMed2002

Economism, efficiency, and the moral ecology of good nursing practice.

The free-market rhetoric dominating health-policy discussions today frames health-care goods and services as commodities that consumers will or will not buy at a given price. Health-care systems are being redesigned and hospitals restructured with a view to increased efficiency and productivity. Drawing on the experiences of clinical nurses in the United States, this paper shows how the application of economism to nursing may severely disrupt the ecology of good practice, leading to difficulties in meeting minimal standards of nursing care and severely constraining the acts of compassion called for by the human experiences of illness, loss, and death. Concerns about moral responsibility and conflicts between institutional and nursing goals are described. Increasing mistrust of health-care systems on the part of practitioners, patients, and families suggests that it is time to attend closely to the moral ecology of caring practices.

Economics, Nursing↗