The Nurse Leader as Knowledge Worker

The nursing profession relies on data for numerous operations. The use of data is the backbone of nursing informatics. This field is mainly aimed at making sure nurses have access to the appropriate data that will help in solving healthcare problems and making decisions that are of interest to patients (Westra et al., 2015). It is also vital for adding to knowledge in the healthcare environment. The scenario of focus is a healthcare organization that suffers from poor ratings from patients. The facility has been experiencing numerous cases of medication errors. However, it lacks a formal medication error reporting system. The failure to report medication errors has resulted in poor customer satisfaction. Some of the clients around the rural area where the organization is located have decided to seek medical services in other facilities that are located even further. This organization may greatly benefit from the use of data.

The organization may collect information on the number of reported medication errors every day. This will help in the determination of the source of error to ensure it is appropriately corrected for assuring patient safety. Another type of data that the facility can collect is patient feedback which may be done by administration of questionnaires after service delivery (Milton, 2017). The data will be crucial in revealing areas that require improvement in the facility to help in improving patient satisfaction and reducing medication errors. Nurse leaders may use clinical reasoning and judgment in the formation of knowledge from the experience. One of the ways for doing this is considering the areas that have the worst ratings in the patient feedback as the potential sources of errors in the hospital process.

References

Milton, C. L. (2017). The ethics of big data and nursing science. Nursing science quarterly, 30(4), 300-302.

Westra, B. L., Clancy, T. R., Sensmeier, J., Warren, J. J., Weaver, C., & Delaney, C. W. (2015). Nursing knowledge: Big data science—Implications for nurse leaders. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 39(4), 304-310.