Improving Quality of Healthcare - Essay Sample

Introduction

Throughout my practice as a nurse, I have seen a significant improvement in four areas: Equitableness of care, patient-centeredness of care, safety of care, and timeliness of care. In my experiences, both as a leader and a practitioner, I have seen increased cases of awareness among nurses on the need to give patients a voice in the process of providing care. Further, a majority of nurses have fully embraced the equitable maxim of quality. My experiences also indicate that nurses are more responsive today to the patients' issues than before. Perhaps a combination of improved equitableness, improved responsiveness to patient issues, and increased appreciation of patients' role in the treatment process have improved patient safety as patient feedbacks offer strong evidence to this claim.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

However, delivery of efficient and effective care appears to derail efforts to achieve quality in the context of the specifications of the Institute of Medicine, 2001.As a nurse leader, I would contribute to improving the fundamentals of care through collaboration. I believe that promoting teamwork and cultivating a sense of community in hospital settings would help nurses to share their frustrations and successes. Such relationship would increase their understanding of the needs and expectations of patients. Provision of such forum would further assist me in assessing the challenges nurses face and respond accordingly.

A quality issue that appears to present significant challenges to the nurses is delivering effective care. Effective care, as one of the major aims of quality care, requires that care should match the available scientific evidence (Davy et al., 2015). Achieving this expectation has been presented significant challenges because many healthcare organizations have been overwhelmed by both the increase in numbers of older patients with chronic conditions and the pressure to provide more efficient services with a view of cutting wastage of resources (Stokes et al., 2015).Owing to the involving nature of the nursing profession, many nurses seem to experience challenges in accessing the latest evidence on treatment. Put simply, the nurses are too busy to read about new scientific evidence regarding the best medical interventions.

Providing timely access to expert information can be an effective strategy in tackling the problem of ineffective care. Nurse leaders can be given access to a community of thinkers, researchers and scientists where the new evidence on treatment techniques are posted and accessed through hospital IT resources. These leaders can then disseminate this information to frontline nurses in a form that is plain and brief. Presentation of information in the mentioned format would discourage incidences where nurses avoid reading new intervention techniques because learning materials are often too voluminous to accommodate their busy schedules(So, 2016; Correa-de-Araujo, 2015).Individual access to information can be augmented by regular seminars where discussions are held, and clarifications are given on the application of the latest treatment techniques.

The interprofessional collaboration has enabled our organization to adopt a multi-faceted approach to the realization of the six aims of quality care. For example, treatment of patients is no longer confined to the interaction between the nurses/ physicians and the patients. The hospital management has given a lot of prominence to the role of families, relatives, and providers in the treatment process. The collaboration effort appears to have reduced the cases of hospitalizations and treatment outcomes. It is expected that our organization would derive efficiency from such positive outcomes. It is further anticipated that this approach would boost the hospital's standing in delivering patient-centered care.

Conclusion

However, there is lack of commitment among other players in this collaboration. Some stakeholders still regard delivery of quality care as a sole obligation of medical professionals. This is to say, these professionals regard themselves as passive players in this effort. In their study, Sullivan, Kiovsky, Mason, Hill, and Dukes (2015), find that interprofessional collaboration is treated as an exception to health care; it is embraced in isolated cases by an isolated number of players. The authors recommend that education of other professionals on the significance of this collaboration and its effect on quality health care can increase their participation in improving quality health care efforts.

References

Correa-de-Araujo, R. (2015). Evidence-based practice in the United States: Challenges, progress, and future directions. Health Care for Women International, 37(1), 2-22. doi:10.1080/07399332.2015.1102269

Davy, C., Bleasel, J., Liu, H., Tchan, M., Ponniah, S., & Brown, A. (2015). Effectiveness of chronic care models: opportunities for improving healthcare practice and health outcomes: a systematic review. BMC Health Services Research, 15(1). doi:10.1186/s12913-015-0854-8

So, W. (2016). Development and implementation of evidence-based practice in cancer care: Challenges and opportunities. Asia-Pacific Journal of Oncology Nursing, 3(1), 33. doi:10.4103/2347-5625.178168

Stokes, J., Panagioti, M., Alam, R., Checkland, K., Cheraghi-Sohi, S., & Bower, P. (2015). Effectiveness of case management for 'at risk' patients in primary care: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0132340. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132340

Sullivan, M., D. Kiovsky, R., J. Mason, D., D. Hill, C., & Dukes, C. (2015). Interprofessional collaboration and education. AJN, American Journal of Nursing, 115(3), 47-54. doi:10.1097/01.naj.0000461822.40440.58