By Frank Couch
University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing Assistant Professor Bryan Wilbanks, PhD, DNP, CRNA, has been awarded a $5,221 grant by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) to determine the impact of nurse anesthesia care on patient safety and outcomes.
Wilbanks study entitled, “An exploration of the relationships between culture of safety, production pressure, occupational burnout, and patient safety,” will utilize proven psychometric instruments, which look at the psychology behind actions, to explore the study variables to ensure the study’s findings can be applied to larger populations and have a sustained impact on nurse anesthesia practice.
Medical errors result in approximately 400,000 patient deaths every year and have been identified as the third leading cause of patient mortality in the United States, according to articles published in the Journal of Patient Safety. Previous studies have shown production pressure, which is an organization's excessive emphasis on the quantity of work over quality, is a significant contributor to medical errors. Increases in production pressure have been associated with improper patient care, occupational burnout, medication errors, health care provider fatigue and staffing shortages. Both production pressure and poor patient outcomes contribute to occupational burnout, especially among older and more experienced providers, Wilbanks said.
“Our specific aims are to examine the relationship between the culture of safety, production pressure, occupational burnout and patient safety among CRNAs and to explore how age and years of clinical practice correlate with occupational burnout or patient safety,” Wilbanks added.
Wilbanks is a two-time UAB School of Nursing graduate. He received his Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) in Nurse Anesthesia in 2012 and his PhD in 2016.
