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Topic: Quality and Safety in healthcare
Quality and safety are the core principles in health care that must be driven by information. This assessment task is designed to help you build skills in finding and understanding research evidence which can be used to improve nursing practice.
1.What impact can teamwork have on patient safety?
2.What role does nursing leadership play in the delivery of safe patient care?
3.What challenges are outlined in the delivery of safe patient care?
4.Why is it important for nurses to lead improvements in the delivery of safe patient care?
Quality and Safety in Healthcare
Quality health care meets the minimum set standards of operation. Safe health care causes no harm to the patient. The two concepts of quality healthcare and patient safety are inseparable. This paper discusses various aspects of quality and safety in healthcare (Tweedy, 2014).
What Impact Can Teamwork Have On Patient Safety? Quality and Safety in Healthcare
According to White, Brown, & Terhaar, (2016), a team is a group of people working towards a common goal. With increasing specialization on care and workforce strategies, there is a need for team work to ensure client safety. Effective teamwork is necessary to minimize medical errors. A multidisciplinary approach is required in making decisions on patients’ health. Each health worker is specialized in his or her field. Co-ordination of all the skills ensures the maximum quality of care delivered to patients. Through collaboration, healthcare workers handle ambiguous situations, make complex decisions and share duties. Also, teamwork helps team members correct and learn from each other and minimizes staff burnout syndrome, hence, increasing the quality of care offered.
What Role Does Nursing Leadership Play In The Delivery Of Safe Patient Care?
According to Prescher, Hamilton, & Rozenblit (2017), nursing leadership is vital in delivering safe patient care. Nursing leadership handles the workforce which is in direct contact with patients all the time. Good nursing leadership motivates staff leading to better patient outcomes. Inversely, poor leadership lowers the morale of the nurses, leading to reduced services to patients.
Nurse leaders who value quality and safety in patient care implement leadership strategies aimed at fostering patients’ safety. Good nurse leaders are exemplary to their juniors, creating a culture of quality care. Nursing leaders use evidence based approach to come up with feasible ways of providing quality and safe care and make decisions directly affecting patient care without compromising their safety or demeaning their staff (White, Brown, & Terhaar, 2016).
Nurse leaders play a role in effective work force through planning and policy development by collecting data used in transforming nursing practice, education, and leadership. Nurse leaders organize job training for their staffs to increase their competence (Tweedy, 2014).
What Challenges Are Outlined In The Delivery Of Safe Patient Care?
According to McCay, Lyles, & Larkey (2018), practice environment poses a threat to patient safety about management, workforce and organization culture. Management may adopt management strategies which create an unfavorable working environment. The shortage of qualified professionals in hospitals results in stressful working environments affecting patient safety negatively. A high patient-nurse ratio is a barrier against safe and personalized nursing care. A significant portion of the nursing workforce is aging and cannot endure an increased workload, hindering the delivery of the best quality of care to patients.
Failure to report errors in nursing practice is a challenge to the delivery of quality patient care. Failure to report errors in nursing practice increases the probability repetition of same or similar clinical errors in the future, jeopardizing the patients’ safety (Tweedy, 2014).
Health Information Technology is a challenge against safe and personalized nursing care. Information technology in nursing care reduces the amount of time the nurse interacts with the patient. The introduction of new technologies to a hospital setting without prior training to nursing staff compromises patients’ safety. Teamwork and communication are important in providing patient safety. However, communication breakdown may result in errors in the patients’ safety. A communication breakdown most likely occurs during changing of shifts and patient transfers between facilities (Needleman, 2017).
Why Is It Important For Nurses to Lead Improvements in the Delivery Of Safe Patient Care?
According to Tweedy (2014), nurses understand and have practical experience and expertise in innovative models of care such as financial, technical and political aspects to fill clinical and financial gaps within the health care delivery system. Nurses have proven solutions but need collaboration with other healthcare professionals to achieve patients’ safety. Nurses are the majority of the healthcare workforce and thus influence the quality of care and treatment provided and patient outcomes.
Safe patient care improves patient outcomes and minimizes operational costs. The nurses implement nursing care and collaborate with other healthcare professionals. Nurses have knowledge and awareness of personal interrelationships with patients and their families (McCay, Lyles, & Larkey, 2018). Order a paper from us today!
Quality and Safety in Healthcare. References
McCay, R., Lyles, A. A., & Larkey, L. (2018). Nurse Leadership Style, Nurse Satisfaction, and Patient Satisfaction: A Systematic Review. Journal of nursing care quality, 33(4), 361-367.
Needleman, J. (2017). Expanding The Role Of Registered Nurses In Primary Care. Registered Nurses: Partners In Transforming Primary Care, 113.
Prescher, H., Hamilton, A. J., & Rozenblit, J. W. (2017). Systems Design, Modeling, and Simulation in Medicine. In Guide to Simulation-Based Disciplines (pp. 209-234). Springer, Cham.
Tweedy, J. T. (2014). Healthcare Safety for Nursing Personnel: An Organizational Guide to Achieving Results. Productivity Press.
White, K. M., Dudley-Brown, S., & Terhaar, M. F. (Eds.). (2016). Translation of evidence into nursing and health care. Springer Publishing Company.
