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NursingDiscussion postPatient safety

NSG 6620 Week 9 DQ 1: nurse leaders, safety and SBAR

Discuss the nurse leader's role in fostering and promoting patient safety initiatives, examine the relationship between patient safety and high-performing interprofessional teams, and explain how communication strategies such as SBAR improve those teams.

Editorial process

Last reviewed · August 14, 2026

01

Safety is a property of teams, and leaders build teams

Three questions, and they form a chain rather than a list: the leader shapes the team, the team determines safety, and SBAR is one of the instruments the leader uses to shape it. Start with the leader, and make the role structural. A nurse leader sets the conditions under which staff will speak up — which means a just culture that separates human error from reckless behaviour, because a punitive response to error simply moves error out of sight. It also means resourcing safety work rather than exhorting it: protected time for huddles, staffing that leaves margin, event reporting that visibly produces change, and leadership rounds where the leader hears about hazards directly. Add role modelling to the list, because a leader who accepts being interrupted gracefully, and thanks the person who did it, teaches a unit more about psychological safety in one moment than a written policy will in a year.

The second question wants the mechanism connecting teams to safety, and the honest answer is communication failure. Handoffs, escalation and the operating room are where information is lost, and communication breakdown is repeatedly identified among the leading contributing factors in sentinel events. High-performing interprofessional teams have shared mental models, explicit role clarity, and enough psychological safety that the most junior member will voice a concern to the most senior. That is what makes SBAR work, and it is where the third question lands. SBAR imposes a structure — situation, background, assessment, recommendation — that does two things at once: it compresses information into a predictable shape the receiver can act on, and, more importantly, its final letter licenses a recommendation from someone who might otherwise only report the facts and hope they are acted on. Say that explicitly, and then give one worked example drawn from your own practice.

Likely learning objectives

Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.

  • 01
    Describe the nurse leader's structural role in creating safety conditions.
  • 02
    Explain the mechanism linking team performance to patient safety.
  • 03
    Analyse why a structured communication tool changes behaviour.
  • 04
    Support the argument with safety-culture evidence.
Assignment instructionsQuoted verbatim

Read the full question

Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.

NSG 6620 Week 9 Assignment 1 DQ 1 Discussion Question 1: Patient Safety High-performing teams in healthcare organizations are the key to success in creating cultures of quality and safety.A high-performing team that works collaboratively enhances communication and patient safety.Healthcare teams that are not high performing and do not work well together are actually a liability in patient safety.For example, it is apparent to patients and their families when healthcare teams are not working collaboratively and communicating with each other.Kaiser Permanente has developed a framework of communication that healthcare staff can use to communicate about their patients, called the situation-background-assessment-recommendation (SBAR) technique (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, n.d.).This technique can be used to foster a culture of teamwork and patient safety. Using the readings for the week, the South University Online Library, and the Internet, respond to the following: Discuss the role of the nurse leader in fostering and promoting initiatives related to patient safety. Examine the relationship between patient safety and high-performing interprofessional healthcare teams. Discuss how the use of communication strategies like SBAR improves the high-performing interprofessional healthcare teams. Comment on the postings of at least two peers. NSG 6620 Week 9 Assignment 1 DQ 1 Evaluation Criteria: Discussed the role of the nurse leader in fostering and promoting initiatives related to patient safety. Examined the relationship between patient safety and high-performing interprofessional healthcare teams. Discussed how the use of communication strategies like SBAR improves the high-performing interprofessional healthcare teams. Justified your answers with appropriate research and reasoning. Commented on the postings of at least two peers.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS Discussion Questions (DQ) Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words. Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source. One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words. I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses. Weekly Participation Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately. In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies. Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work). Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week. APA Format and Writing Quality Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required). Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation. I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition. Use of Direct Quotes I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly. As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content. It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. LopesWrite Policy For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me. Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes. Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own? Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score. Late Policy The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies. Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances. If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect. I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension. As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading. Communication Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class. Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

02

Turn the brief into deliverables

  1. 01
    The role of the nurse leader in fostering and promoting patient safety initiatives.
  2. 02
    The relationship between patient safety and high-performing interprofessional teams.
  3. 03
    How communication strategies like SBAR improve those teams.
  4. 04
    A worked example of SBAR in practice.
  5. 05
    Research and reasoning justifying the answers.
  6. 06
    Comments on the postings of at least two peers.
03

The leader, the team, then the tool

01

The nurse leader's role

Just culture, resourcing, event reporting that produces change, leadership rounds.

02

Why teams determine safety

Handoffs, escalation and the operating room as the failure points.

03

What high-performing means

Shared mental models, role clarity, psychological safety.

04

How SBAR works

Predictable structure, and a licensed recommendation from a junior member.

05

SBAR in practice

One handoff or deterioration escalation, before and after.

06

What the leader does next

Embedding, auditing and sustaining the practice.

04

Where the safety-culture evidence sits

Recommended databases

  • The Joint Commission
  • Institute for Healthcare Improvement
  • PubMed Central
  • South University Online Library

Search sequence

  1. 1.
    Find the leading contributing factors reported for sentinel events.
  2. 2.
    Read a review of safety-culture strengthening strategies.
  3. 3.
    Look up the evidence on structured handoff tools and outcomes.
  4. 4.
    Read on psychological safety in clinical teams.
  5. 5.
    Choose the SBAR example you will narrate before writing.
05

Reference shortlist

These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.

Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.

  1. 01

    Sentinel Event Policy

    The Joint Commission · 2025

    Definitions and the contributing factors that make communication central.

  2. 02

    Mapping Strategies for Strengthening Safety Culture: A Scoping Review

    Healthcare (Basel) · 2024

    What leadership actions have actually been shown to move safety culture.

  3. 03

    Essential elements and outcomes of psychological safety in the healthcare practice setting: A systematic review

    Applied Nursing Research · 2025

    Why a junior team member will or will not voice a concern.

  4. 04

    COLLABORATION WITHIN THE INTERPROFESSIONAL TEAM

    Nursing Management and Professional Concepts, NCBI Bookshelf · 2022

    SBAR described in full, alongside the other structured communication tools.

06

Review before submission

Common mistakes

  • Describing the leader's role as encouraging safety rather than resourcing it.
  • Asserting that good teams are safer without naming communication failure.
  • Explaining SBAR's four letters without saying why the R matters.
  • Omitting just culture, which is what makes reporting possible.
  • Giving no example of SBAR in a real handoff or escalation.
  • Ignoring the sentinel-event evidence that grounds the whole argument.

Submission checklist

  • The leader's role includes structures, not only attitudes.
  • Just culture and psychological safety are addressed.
  • The team-to-safety link runs through communication failure.
  • Sentinel-event or safety-culture evidence is cited.
  • SBAR's recommendation step is explained as the key mechanism.
  • One concrete SBAR example is given, with APA citations.

Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.

Written by

Aaron Bishop

MA, Education

assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines

Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.

Reviewed by

Dr. Nathan Cole

PhD, Rhetoric & Composition

Argumentation and thesis development

Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.

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