Quality Nursing
QUESTION
As health care consumers, we all expect quality care and positive outcomes. It is important as professionals that we meet these demands of health care consumers. Consider the work of the major theorists you examined in this week’s Resources, and think about how these theories apply to your own experience as a health care customer and/or practitioner.
By Day 3
Post your definition of quality, and apply it to the work of one major quality theorist (e.g., Donabedian, Juran, Deming, Triple Aim (IHI) – Berwick). Identify a practice problem that you have had some experience with as a customer or as a practitioner, and explain how eliminating wasteful practices could have improved the experience. Include how your definition of quality applies to that experience.
Support your response with references from the professional nursing literature. Your posts need to be written at the capstone level
Quality Nursing
ANSWER
Quality Nursing
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Quality in my opinion, is inherently characterized by the competence and personal attention to patients in addition to professionalism delivered in a demeanor that is appropriate. Generally, quality is defined as the degree at which the health services for individuals and entire populations increase the likelihood of desired outcomes (Dempsey & Assi, 2018). These healthcare services are in line with the latest professional knowledge in nursing. The main indicator of quality, in my opinion is the expression of standards. In further defining quality, patient safety is central in the attainment of the former. Patient safety is defined as the prevention of harm to patients, placing emphasis on the prevention of errors, learning from the errors that do not occur and building a culture of professionals, organizations and trustable patients.
In pursuit of quality healthcare services in The United States, there requires an achievement of the following three aims; the improvement of healthcare experience, improving the health welfare of individuals, reducing the per capita costs of healthcare. These three paradigm dimensions were put together by the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI). THI with the objective to assist healthcare organizations to optimize performance using a variety of metrics. Hence the Triple Aim. Donald Berwick is the most visible figure around the Triple Aim theory but it was definitely the brain child of John Whittington and Tom Nolan. The theory advocates for safety, effectiveness, patient centeredness, Timeliness as well as equity. Patients should feel safe, they should trust the professionalism as well as closing socioeconomic gaps. Above all to undertake treatment in timely manner while still ensuring affordable costs.
Infections associated with healthcare is becoming a recurring error among healthcare institutions in United States of America. As a practitioner I witnessed, a patient develop catheter associated urinary tract infection. This is Urinary tract infection in which upon the bedside nurse taking positive culture when a urinary catheter was indwelling had been placed for less than two calendar days. This automatically predisposes the patient bacteriuria and UTIs (Sadigh et al., 2017). According to a 2015 survey data by the Center for disease control and prevention it was found out that one in thirty-one hospitals had at least one infection associated with healthcare. These infections alongside other healthcare associated infections are readily preventable. The most effective preventive measures are to avoid removing catheters as soon as possible. As intermittent catheterization poses less risk than indwelling catheterizations it safer and less cheap to use the former. This also reduces wastage.
Measures related to the reductions of healthcare –associated infections have been developed in a variety of IHI programs and initiatives. These measures have been uniquely crafted to the specific aims and objectives. If personally I would walk into a healthcare center and trust the medical team completely, it would be the least of my expectations to come out with an infection from a place that is deemed to be a safe. Quality service is entailed through the proper attention to minute details. If for instance I’m need of a catheter, the nurse practitioner is supposed to weigh all the risks that are associated with an intermittent vs an indwelling catheter. There should also be a supervising nurse to the whole intervention exercise to ensure that everything is done professionally (Stimpfel et al., 2020). This would reduce the resulting expense on cost.
References
Dempsey, C., & Assi, M. (2018). The Impact of Nurse Engagement on Quality, Safety, and the Experience of Care. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 42(3), 278-283. https://doi.org
Sadigh, G., Applegate, K., & Saindane, A. (2017). Prevalence of Unanticipated Events Associated with MRI Examinations: A Benchmark for MRI Quality, Safety, and Patient Experience. Journal of The American College of Radiology, 14(6), 765-772.
Stimpfel, A., Fatehi, F., & Kovner, C. (2020). Nurses’ sleep, work hours, and patient care quality, and safety. Sleep Health, 6(3), 314-320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2019.11.001