Quality Improvement In Healthcare

Buchan and Aiken (2008) stated that the nurses shortage problems may be due to the nurses that not willing to work as a nurse under the current conditions in working environment. A real shortage is circumstances where experienced people are not available for a certain vacancies due to some reasons (Wildschut&Mqolozana, 2008). A news article written by Salma Khalikin in Straits Times stated that according to current situation Singapore may not be able to create enough nurses for upcoming years. The impact of nurses shortage may causes increase work load for nurses which subsequently may increase the risk for nurses made errors in clinical, the risk of increase hospital acquired infections which cause by viral, bacterial, and fungal pathogens. More over the impact of shortage of nurses may also increase death rate, and also increase the risk of occupation injuries and exposure in working environments.

Especially, nurses, who are older than 48 years old, may need the drugs for relieved chronic pain as their bodies are easily to be injured to musculoskeletal. There are 10 percent to 15 percent of general population involved in substance abuse. However, healthcare profession has a higher rate of using prescription drugs. The healthcare profession had used drugs for occupational hazard pain (John Furman, January

At the time of the event, a bar coding system for all medication had been in effect for a duration of two weeks, however, Thao had been gone one of those crucial weeks. Because of her absence, she did not receive the adequate training, instead, she received a sped

Ethical Issues in Nursing: Nurse-Patient Ratios Megan Harvey, Katie McKelvery, Erica Robbins & Cassandra Tingley St. Johns River State College March 2018 Ethical Issues in Nursing: Nurse-Patient Ratios Every day nurses are faced with ethical dilemmas. Challenges in these situations are becoming more and more complex due to increasing workload and sicker patients. When a nursing unit is understaffed not only are nurses more likely to become burnt out, but their patients are far less likely to receive the quality of care they deserve. The problem is that the Federal regulations require hospitals who participate in Medicare to “have ‘adequate’ numbers of licensed nurses (RN, LPN, CNA) to provide care to all patients as needed,” but the regulations

Likewise in healthcare, oncoming staff generally does initiate not patient care delivery until a hand off process occurs. “Communication failures are increasingly being implicated as important latent factors influencing patient safety in hospitals. ”(Sutcliffe, 2004, p. 187) Parker (1996) reports, “the nurses handing over had direct knowledge of the patient and were able to convey idiosyncratic and personal knowledge of the patient. This is a crucial element in professional nursing practice.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is used to facilitate the team analysed to identify the root cause of the above event that resulted in undesired outcome and develop corrective action (Sondalini, 2011). After three months of observation, staff nurse in hemodialysis is too engrossed in writing the nursing report and desolate the bedside patient care. This includes knowledge of the dialysis technician to overcome trouble shooting such as hypotension and cramp which need to be done as soon as possible during dialysis treatment. Other factors have been identified, such as lack of staffing for training staff nurse and newbies dialysis technician. Those factors will not be discussed in this essay.

Abstract/Purpose: (please refer to separate file) The worsening problem of hospital nursing shortage has resulted to inadequate nurse staffing, which affects our nursing care to our patients and our satisfaction towards our job. Understanding how nursing staffing levels affect both patient and nurse outcomes prompted these researchers to conduct a study on hospital nurse staffing levels (Aiken, Clarke, Sloane, Sochalski, & Silber, 2002). The purpose of their study was to examine the relationship between the nurse-to-patient ratio and surgical patient outcomes, specifically patient mortality and mortality following complications nurse retention as well as the factors that influence nurse retention (Aiken et al., 2002). The study was conducted

Because of this, their failed to assess the pain during patient self-report and give an appropriate treatment. Thus, inadequate pain management will affect the quality of life and also creates a financial burden on health care system such as longer hospitalization and readmission (Grant et. al, 1995; Sheehan et. al, 1996). According to data from Robert Wood Johnson (1995) showed a high incidence of uncontrolled pain among adult patient with the result of 74% to 95% are dying

1.INTRODUCTION When we talk about abuse or abandon, the first object which comes to our mind definitely will be children. However, the fact is, it happens to the elderly too and the percentage of elderly being abused is getting higher. The elder abuse had become a very common issue in this society. They are either abused by their friends, family members or by the caretakers that are hired by their family, as well as in the nursing home.

One ethical obligation nurses are required to fulfil during their shift is to ensure no harm is done to their patient. Due to nursing shortages and too many patient’s, nurses are finding this hard to do. Ethics help nurses make the right decisions with the guidance of their morals, but due to shortages and overworked nurses they tend to feel dissatisfied with their jobs. This results from unsafe work environments, lack of time for communication and quality care of patients. “Understaffing and overtime hours have been associated with increases in patient mortality, hospital-acquired infections, shock, and bloodstream infections” (Kane et al., 2007b).

These alarming statistics raise a huge concern with the effectiveness of the transitions of care. The main issue with transitions of care is that there are discrepancies that mistakenly occur during this process. As reported by Judith Kristeller, PharmD BCPS, “the transition between inpatient and community settings in particular is prone to medication errors related to a lack of communication between health care providers, missed patient follow-up, inadequate patient education, etc.” (6). Medicare services have even included a three percent fine on Medicare payment for hospitals that have unnecessary readmissions, and this percent has increased since 2014 (5).

The study conducted by Ford revealed that, due to hourly rounding, the amount of times patient used the call light was reduced by 52% and no

Concept Analysis Abuse in regards to the health care setting is not found in any dictionary, but as a beginning point for this concept analysis, a general definition of abuse is considered; “…abuse means to consume or misuse” (Cutcliffe & McKenna, 2005, p. 17). Another definition considered is by Bruggemann, Wijma & Swahnberg (2012) stating, “Abuse in health care is defined by patients’ subjective experiences of encounters with the health care system, characterized by devoid of care, where patients suffer and feel they lose their value as human beings” (p.123). The authors continue the definition, stating that abuse can be intentional or unintentional, verbal and non-verbal, and abuse can occur in both children and adults (Bruggemann, et.

Nurse of the Future: Competence in Quality Improvement Brittany J. Nembhard Chamberlain College of Nursing Nurse of the Future: Competence in Quality Improvement Nursing competencies were derived in order to provide an outline of foundational knowledge baccalaureate prepared nurses should consist of. Amongst the nine competencies, knowledge of quality improvement is essential in the practicing nurse. Quality improvement, also known as total quality improvement or simply abbreviated, QI, can be looked at as an organized value or process to deliver the best possible goods or services to its consumers (Lucy Hood).

Health care has gone through a great evolution through the years. Before 1965, individuals older than 65 years old received inadequate healthcare and more than half of this population did not have coverage (Reinhard, 2012). Due to this predicament, the need to identify issues and implement health policy was imperative to improve health care. Consequently, Medicare was introduced with the goal to mitigate the health issues during the 1960’s and to improve the healthcare availability for individuals 65 years and older. Since then, Medicare has gone through numerous changes in order to incorporate other population needs.