Effect of a primed goal of patient safety on patient risk detection [abstract]

Abstract

The ability of intensive care unit (ICU) nurses to detect potential adverse events in critically ill patients is strongly influenced by the environment in which they function. Features of social environments, such as leadership behaviors, provide situational cues that prime goals influencing the behavior of frontline staff. Priming a goal of patient safety can influence a nurse's decision to identify a stimulus such as a monitor alarm as signal of potential patient risk rather than background noise to be ignored. Therefore, primed nurses should perform better in patient risk detection than non-primed nurses. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of leadership behavior on patient risk detection by ICU nurses.