Aim
To explore and explain how nurses minimise risk in the perioperative setting.
Background
Perioperative nurses care for patients who are having surgery or other invasive explorative procedures. Perioperative care is increasingly focused on how to improve patient safety. Safety and risk management is a global priority for health services in reducing risk. Many studies have explored safety within the health care settings. However little is known about how nurses minimise risk in the perioperative setting.
Design
Classic grounded theory
Methods. Ethical approval was granted for all aspects of the study. Thirty seven nurses working in 11 different perioperative settings in Ireland were interviewed and thirty three hour of non-participant observation was undertaken. Concurrent data collection and analysis was undertaken using theoretical sampling. Constant comparative method, coding and memoing and were used to analyse the data.
Results
Participants’ main concern was how to minimise risk. Participants resolved this through engaging in anticipatory vigilance (core category). This strategy consisted of orchestrating, routinizing and momentary adapting.
Conclusion
Understanding the strategies of anticipatory vigilance extends and provides an in-depth explanation of how nurses’ behaviour ensures that risk is minimised in a complex high risk perioperative setting. This is the first theory situated in the perioperative area for nurses.