Executive Summary: Quality and Performance Improvement Initiative in Nursing
The primary role of this initiative is to oversee national healthcare reforms mostly in the nursing domain. Therefore, the main objectives of this administrative initiative entirely reflect on the three major goals of strategies laid out by the National Healthcare Improvement Institute x. The said strategies include improving patient care experiences, minimizing costs on healthcare, and improving the overall health of the populations through ensuring proper care coordination and safety of patients, intensifying caregiver services, heightening medical care to populations at risk, and upgrading levels of accessibility to resources on preventive health (Child & Institute of medicine, 2004). Besides, this initiative also aims at addressing various vital aspects of general healthcare in the relevant healthcare institutions. As such, this document brings out a clear outline on the purpose of the stated initiative, information on the target population, benefits attained from the initiative, the total approximated budget justification and ultimately, and the basis of evaluation for the initiative.
As stated earlier, the other chief role of this initiative is to address several important aspects of the overall healthcare services offered in health institutions. Such aspects include improving the quality of patient engagement in hospitals, downsizing the number of health conditions acquired from medical institutions, and enhancing the rate of incorporation of solutions and up to date technologies recommended by health informatics in hospitals (Feldman & Alexander, 2012). In turn, this will help to ameliorate the speed of clinical workflows and data in all foundations dealing with provision of healthcare services. Furthermore, this will also aid in boosting accessibility levels to simple but sophisticated sources of knowledge ranging from medicals websites, e-books, YouTube videos, and e- journals for all the registered and practicing nurses.
The prime target population of the Quality and Performance Improvement Initiative in Nursing is the patients hailing from both risky areas and populations with lower risks. Hence, another key role of this initiative is to manage and sustain full patient engagement through the administration of more effective and patient-centered modes of technology in all healthcare facilities. This is because it is extremely important to indulge patients throughout their journey to recovery as it helps to catalyze the entire process (Child & Institute of medicine, 2004). Consequently, the initiative advocates that all running hospitals should have modern facilities that allow fast and efficient channeling and accessibility of information including the bio-data of both in-patients and outpatients. In turn, this would foster patient engagement by ensuring that both medics and patients monitor all activities involved throughout the recovery process thereby cutting down avoidable health risks such as medical errors.
Moreover, this initiative requires practicing nurses across the nation to familiarize themselves with information technology tools that support and major in patient care. Notably, most of the IT tools contain various systems of documentation of relevant medical data that allow smooth and efficient running of nursing workflows (Child & Institute of medicine, 2004). In addition, these tools also possess an extremely important program referred to as the Clinical Decision Support (CDS) usually located deep into the documentation systems that aid in monitoring all improvements made by different patients. Besides, this essential capturing and storage of clinical measures and data made possible by only standardized documentation of patients’ information through the said IT tools also helps in the tracking of patients’ bio-data and histories in hospitals.
Furthermore, Feldman and Alexander (2012) have it that this initiative will also help to keep an eye on the dispensation and implementation of these IT tools such as the standardized documentation tool on skin risks launched in 2008 with the aid of experts on the crucial sector of nursing, across all health care institutions. In turn, this will help in guiding staff nurses on duty in the essential substantiation of paramount patient assessments without skipping some crucial components of the vital data. Hence, the entire nursing unit will have an enhanced way of observing certain medical issues such as patients’ skin inspection, minimizing the hospitals’ load of pressure ulcers and determining the overall risk analysis in all patients (Feldman & Alexander, 2012). Moreover, the data obtained from the said information technology tools also aid in the determination of the nursing staffs’ academic needs, evaluation of the patients’ improvement process and tracking all the trends in illnesses acquired from hospitals such as ulcers due to pressure.
In addition, this initiative also aims at strengthening communication processes and location systems in hospital. Ideally, this is because both communication and location breakdowns adversely affect the staff as well as the patients. The amount of valuable time spent in looking for equipment, medical supplies, locating vacant hospital beds and waiting for the opening of either examination, or treatment rooms destabilizes efficient patient care. Besides, such kinds of delay also interrupt the flow of patients within health institutions thereby posing a nuisance to both the nurses in charge and patients (Feldman & Alexander, 2012). Therefore, this initiative is set to oversee the launching of a system on real time location combining software, hardware and tags that allow all verified users to access hospitals’ overall data. This data includes the tracking of hospital equipment, observing patients’ temperature, management of laboratory supplies, monitoring patients’ hygiene, surveillance of patients’ movements to curb unnecessary eloping and straying and keenly keeping track on surgeries and emergencies.
In turn, all this will lead to increased efficiency in both the delivery and quality of services in health institutions to patients and their families (Child & Institute of medicine, 2004). In addition, this initiative will also help in lowering the overall working costs through strict tracking and observation of the general hospital data. Consequently, this initiative requires a substantial amount of money for funding since the roles it intends to accomplish are similarly huge and important. This is based on the huge costs incurred during the facilitation of hiring well-educated nurses and health care personnel, implementation of up to date and operational health care facilities and monitoring all the processes involved in the provision of quality health care. Moreover, huge costs are also bound to be incurred while overseeing the implementation and launching of the stated IT software and programs advocated by health informatics. As a result, this initiative would surely require not only a significant amount of funds but also full validation from both the sponsors and board members.
The basis of the initiative’s evaluation will mainly stem from three crucial areas namely the process measures, outcome measures and the methods of selling used. In other words, this initiative is evaluable through its planning and implementation issues, achievement of the set objectives such as its ability to enhance nursing healthcare services, boosting the information systems and care givers’ skills and impacts made on the target population (Feldman & Alexander, 2012). Furthermore, the methods used to sell the initiative can also create a basis of evaluation by reviewing its reports on goal attainment, systems of documentation and the logs and diaries used in setting up the initiative.
References
Child, A. P., & Institute of Medicine (U.S.). (2004). Keeping patients safe: Transforming the work environment of nurses. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press.
Feldman, H. R., & Alexander, G. R. (2012). Nursing leadership: A concise encyclopedia. New York: Springer.
