Reflection on Learning
karolyn1311
WEEK3PoliticalAdvocacy.docx2
Political Advocacy
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Hello Dr. Liter and class
I held a consultative meeting with a group of decision-makers in the practicum site, intending to identify the problem their healthcare facility has been experiencing in the past few years. I realized that they want a leadership roadmap that is strong and supportive. The new leadership team is stronger and more aligned with the needs of the nurses. Therefore, proposing my DNP project to them would be of great benefit. Through a series of discussions about healthcare improvement and provision of quality and safe care, the decision-makers were concerned about old age patients who, for a long time now are being exposed to secondary acquired infections, increased mortalities, morbidities, increased cost of healthcare and increased period of stay within the hospital because of the increased rate of falling (Cunha, Baixinho & Henriques, 2019). Since this population has other underlying health problems, sustaining a fall is close to zero because a fall subject an elderly individual to poor quality of life, reduced functionality and surgical interventions. This team of decision-makers found that the increased rate of elderly falls in their practicum site is due to the knowledge gap and strategies supposed to reduce fall incidences and the goodwill from healthcare providers to implement evidence-based interventions.
According to Luke et al. (2018), translation science helps organizations implement an evidence-based practice change to measure variables, develop interventions and examine methods that will improve the overall operational decision-making process and clinical practice. Translation science helps to improve healthcare service delivery, the safety of patients and healthcare, and increased efficiency and effectiveness (Luke et al., 2018). My translation into practice recommendations is implementing fall prevention programs such as hourly rounding to prevent falls. However, hourly rounding by nurses should not be an isolated intervention; but instead, it should be incorporated with other fall prevention approaches and risk assessment tools (Luke et al., 2018).
My practicum site is my workplace. My current priority is to see that the proposed DNP project concerned with preventing fall-related incidences among the elderly population is implemented in the practicum site to assess the way nurse leaders can minimize patient falls through integrated fall prevention programs followed by robust sustenance initiatives (Linehan & Linehan, 2018). Nurse leaders should implement several fall prevention strategies, which should be sustained with a strong safety culture. Nurse leaders must use evidence-based fall prevention strategies because patients' falls are still a major health problem. Due to the increased cost and length of stay that causes more pain to elderly patients experiencing fall incidences, the decision-makers will not hesitate in supporting my DNP project because they have promised to design a nurse education and training program that looks forward to educating nurses about the importance of conducting hourly rounds within the facility to assure patient’s care safety. as a result, prioritized care will be made based on those patients identified through risk assessment by nurses as high risks of falling.
References
Cunha, L. F. C. D., Baixinho, C. L., & Henriques, M. A. (2019). Preventing falls in hospitalized elderly: design and validation of a team intervention. Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP, 53.
Luke, D. A., Sarli, C. C., Suiter, A. M., Carothers, B. J., Combs, T. B., Allen, J. L., ... & Evanoff, B. A. (2018). The translational science benefits model: a new framework for assessing the health and societal benefits of clinical and translational sciences. Clinical and translational science, 11(1), 77-84.
Linehan, J., & Linehan, J. (2018). Fall prevention in long term care using purposeful hourly rounding. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 19(3), B17.
