DNP- LEADERSHIP FOR ADVANCED NURSING PRACTICE

Quality and Safety

DNP-835-0501- Patient Outcomes and Sustainable Change

Patient safety is the essential foundation of delivering high-quality health care. It is viewed as the underlying umbrella of patient safety. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), patient safety is indistinguishable from delivering high quality health care. The organization defined it as “the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge.” Prevention of harm in its practices have mostly defined by negative outcomes of care that include mortality and morbidity (Mitchell, 2008). This project discusses the role of quality and/or safety in nursing science with emphasis on quality and/or safety measures and description of their relationship and role in present-day nursing science and how it applies quality or safety measures in nursing science. In addition, it provided the components required to analyze a health care program’s outcome (GCU, 2020).

Defining Quality and Safety Measures

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), quality in nursing refers to “the extent to which health care services provided to individuals and patient populations improve desired health outcomes” (Salyers et al., 2017). For this to be achieved, nursing practice must be people-centered, equitable, efficient, timely effective and safe. While there are numerous ways of developing, assessing and assuring quality, the concept of quality in nursing care is difficult to measure. In the healthcare setting, there are promises of providing quality care by nurses and desired by patients. Quality care has significant impact on patient experience and satisfaction. As the nursing environment becomes more complex, organization leaders must understand the role of quality in healthcare.

Regarding safety, it is yet an important component of high-quality healthcare. You cannot talk about quality healthcare without talking about safety. Multiple studies show that many patients are harmed in healthcare facilities, which increases their length of hospital stay or resulting in permanent injuries. In severe cases lack of safety in healthcare results in death. Studies show that this harm is not intentional, but as a result of the multifaceted and complex nursing environment with the outcome of a patient depending on a wide range of factors. Multiple strategies have however been developed to improve safety in healthcare.

Quality plays an important role in nursing practice. Healthcare organizations must provide quality healthcare services to meet the needs of their patients and the community in general. This not only improves the outcome of patients but also increases nurse satisfaction resulting in improved performance. Quality ensures that healthcare organizations provide patient centered services that take into consideration people’s aspirations and preferences as well as the culture of their community. It also ensures all patients receive equitable services regardless of their personal characteristics such as socioeconomic status, geographical location, ethnicity, race, or gender.

Quality in nursing also ensures that patients receive healthcare on time and without delays. Once patients are admitted in the healthcare system, they need to receive care as soon as possible. It also ensures efficiency in the healthcare system. This implies that healthcare is delivered in a manner that avoids wastage and maximizes all resources available. Quality ensures there is safety in delivering healthcare services to patients. This involves delivering car that harm and risk to patients including reducing medical errors and avoiding preventable injuries. Providing quality care is therefore a critical part of strengthening health systems (Graban, 2018).

The roles of safety measures in nursing practice is to ensure reduce the likelihood of mistakes and limit harm though planning that promotes effective communication. Nurse practitioners, support staff and patients share a common goal; to achieve the best health outcome possible. Safety in healthcare promotes the well-being of the general community. Nurse practitioners and healthcare managers must understand their role in patient safety. Administrators must train all employees about safety in the healthcare setting and updater the regularly on any changes in policy. All employees in healthcare setting must adhere to the safety procedures developed by the organization.

Contemporary Example

There are various ways in which healthcare organizations apply quality and safety measures in the healthcare system. One way of ensuring safety quality and safety measures is by communicating safety among patients. Patients have historically played a passive role in their recovery process. Patients placed significant trust on healthcare providers and unquestioningly followed treatment plans. However, today healthcare organizations emphasize on educating patients to help reduce medical errors. Once patients are admitted in the healthcare system, they receive specific information concerning their safety. Patients are encouraged to ask questions where they don’t understand to help prevent common healthcare errors that could lead to undesirable outcomes (Vincent & Staines, 2019).

At the present, patients take part in their recovery planning. They have increasingly become more involved in the treatment progress. Therefore, they receive safer treatment as educated consumers because health advocates and care providers have helped them to develop the ability to notice potential problems and ask relevant questions. Even after leaving healthcare organizations, patients are able to monitor their situation and determine when something goes wrong. As a result, more patients are receiving quality treatment increasing their outcomes. Patient education has proved to be an effective approach in reducing medical errors that have historically dominated the healthcare systems around the world (Modi et al., (2019).

Contemporary nursing practice has become more patient centered. Whenever people talk about service quality, patient centered care is always mentioned. Initially the philosophy was considered to undermine the efforts of evidence-based practice. However, health advocates now consider patient centered care as an important framework for fostering desired wellness outcomes. It allows nurse practitioners to incorporate evidence-based practice in providing care to patients. Patients feel more secure and trust the process, and they are fully aware of what to expect. This awareness makes it easy for healthcare providers to avoid making mistakes when dealing with patients. This also eliminated illegal activities I the healthcare systems as information is readily available.

Quality and Components Needed to Analyze a Health Care Program's Outcomes

There are numerous components that can be used to analyze the outcomes of a particular healthcare program. One of these components is effectiveness. This involves providing healthcare services based on evidence-based guidelines and scientific knowledge. This helps to analyze patient outcomes by determining whether recommended hospital care is utilized for specific medical conditions such as prevention of surgical infection, heart attack and pneumonia care. Timeliness is another component needed to analyze the outcomes of healthcare programs. Patients need to receive medical care without any delays. In this quality measure, the patient reports on the timeliness of care and services they received in a particular healthcare facility (Brown, Dickinson & Kelaher, 2018).

Patient centeredness is another measure that is used to analyze the outcomes of health care programs. This component involves taking care of patients while considering their preferences. It can be measured through reviewing patient reports of services offered by an organization. It can also be analyzed by determining whether a healthcare organization provided care instructions after a patient has been discharged from hospital. In patient centered care, people are given instructions on how to care themselves at home. Failure to give these instructions shows that the healthcare facility or hospital does not offer patient centered care (Allen et al., 2016).

Another component that can be used to analyze the outcomes of a particular healthcare program is efficiency. This component involves providing services and care that minimizes wastage and maximizes the available resources. This component can be analyzed by utilization of hospital procedures and services as measured by the average hospital stay or hospital discharge rate. A low rate of discharge from the hospital shows lack of efficiency in delivering healthcare services to patients. In the same way, a high rate of hospital discharge is an indicator of an effective healthcare system. Either way, an efficient healthcare program must ensure patients receive quality healthcare services (Lamé & Dixon-Woods, 2018).

Equity is also an important component in analyzing outcomes of healthcare programs. This involves determining whether patients receive equitable services regardless of their personal characteristics such as socioeconomic status, geographical location, ethnicity, race, or gender. Hospitals can provide equitable services by ensuring they have equal number of beds for both genders and ensuring there is no discrimination in the healthcare setting. Electronic medical records can be used to determine the services provided for every patient who visited a particular hospital. Nurse to patient ration can also provide critical information for the analysis of outcomes of healthcare programs.

Conclusion

Patient safety remains the cornerstone in the provision of high-quality health care. Health care professionals, especially nurses are extremely important to the care, control, supervision and coordination that will help in reducing negative or adverse outcomes. The numerous government healthcare organizations in collaboration with healthcare professionals must continue to work on evaluating the impact of nursing care on positive quality indicators that include appropriate self-care and other measures of improved health status (Mitchell, 2008).

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