Hundreds gather for HMSDC conference on the key role of nurses in patient safety and quality of care

Health care organizations around the world are becoming increasingly responsive to the challenge of meeting the educational and career development needs of their nursing staff, seen as a vital component of quality care delivery. The issues affecting the nursing profession are universal: high turnover rates, staff shortages, and a lack of resources for education and training. In April, the Harvard Medical School Dubai Center (HMSDC) Institute for Postgraduate Education & Research, together with Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC), held a two-day conference focused on these issues as they occur in the Gulf Region.

The program, entitled “The Role of the Nurse in Promoting Patient Safety and Quality,” drew around 400 attendees representing all facets of the nursing profession, including clinicians, top administrators, educators, and quality coordinators and managers. The conference was co-directed by nursing professionals Elizabeth Brown, RN, MSN, MBA, HMI Director of Clinical Services, and Arlene Asgard, MS, RN, Program Director of HMI Gulf. A multidisciplinary faculty led interactive discussions on clinical best practices, the need to support leadership initiatives and educational opportunities for nurses, and the importance of networking and information-sharing among nurses.

The conference’s large turnout was a positive indicator of the regional concern about the professional development of nurses. The Gulf Region has an acute nursing shortage, attributable in part to the lack of degree programs in nursing offered at regional universities and colleges and less than competitive wages for nursing professionals, according to Fatima Rifai, MSN, RN, Director of the Federal Department of Nursing in the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Health. The Gulf Region has an acute nursing shortage, attributable in part to the lack of degrees in nursing offered at regional universities and colleges and less than competitive wages for nursing professionals, according to Fatima Rifai, MSN, RN, Director of the Federal Department of Nursing in the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Health. Still, programs specifically targeting nurses are rare in the region, said Asgard. “A lack of financial resources to support training and education and long work hours also discourage nurses from seeking professional development,” she said.

Conference attendee Patricia McEvoy, RN, a nurse with the Medical Services division of the airline Emirates, was excited about the opportunity. “Nursing conferences such as this one are just what is needed in Dubai. The speakers were excellent and quite inspirational in their forecast for the future of nursing in the region.”

Other participants called the program an “eye-opener” and expressed the hope for similar programs in the future. Cecile Tapino, RN, a charge nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Al Rahba Hospital in Abu Dhabi, said, “This conference gave me ideas on how to develop effective change in my organization.”

Brown said that the conference aimed to address patient safety and quality in the context of the four domains of nursing: leadership, education, research, and patient care. Lauren Arnold, PhD, RN, of the US-based Alliance Healthcare Consulting firm, discussed nursing leadership strategies that have been effective in the United States and methods for establishing strategic agendas that promote patient safety and quality. Later, Arnold discussed approaches to designing and implementing safe patient care environments, including international trends and experiences in this area. Joan Fitzmaurice, PhD, RN, Director of the Office of Quality and Safety at Massachusetts General Hospital, presented the early findings of a research collaboration between the hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed to improve “hand-offs” in clinical care, the process by which a nurse ending a shift or taking a break communicates certain information to the nurse or nurses assuming patient care responsibilities. Fitzmaurice also described and compared approaches designed to engage nurses in quality assessment and patient safety initiatives.

One of the core principles underlying the conference was the nurse’s integral role in not only the delivery but the design of patient care. Robert Thurer, MD, Chief Academic Officer of HMSDC, discussed the importance of the physician’s support of interdisciplinary education and team training for nursing professionals. Similarly, Muhadditha Al Hashimi, Chief Executive Officer of DHCC, emphasized “the instrumental role nurses play in promoting, monitoring and improving quality and patient safety.”

Brown, who has played a major role in HMI initiatives focused on hospital design and development, emphasized the increasingly important role of nurses in clinical space design to improve patient safety. "Studies have shown that the design of the medical units and hospitals, including the architecture, space, natural lighting, and other elements, increase the patients' well-being, their satisfaction rate, and the staff's satisfaction rate and efficiency," she said.

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