Interventional patient hygiene: Discussion of the issues and a proposed model for implementation of the nursing care basics

SummaryMore than 140 years ago, Florence Nightingale wrote “It may seem a strange principal to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm.” Data suggests that 63% of all preventable errors are related to clinical problems that are within nursing's independent scope of practice. Many of these fall in the category of “interventional hygiene” activities and include prevention of skin injury, post-operative respiratory complications and failure to rescue. As nurses we are called upon to assure higher levels of safety and quality for our patients by our governments, professional organisations and hospital administrations. It is essential that we implement evidence based nursing care strategies to reduce avoidable errors in care so that clinical outcomes improve. The author of this paper, who coined the team “interventional patient hygiene”, discusses the science related to many of these care issues and proposes an Interventional Care Model for use by nurses in redesigning how we approach nurse sensitive care practices in the future. Additionally, a change framework called “Sustaining Nursing Clinical Practice” is described to ensure reintroduction and valuing of evidence basic nursing care in conjunction with the right resources and systems to sustain the new practice.