Assessing and managing risk

Assessing and managing risk is a core aspect of nursing and healthcare. There are risks inherent in every action or omission in relation to patient care, as there are in all areas of our lives.

Although there is no legal concept of 'risk', there is 'negligence', which may be deemed to have occurred where insufficient action was taken to mitigate harm.

There are also ethical principles underpinning all the decisions that we make on a daily basis. We make decisions and act, consciously or otherwise, in ways that may champion the individual over the wider patient population, or conversely, to protect the public at the risk of causing harm to an individual.