Patient Care Safety
The quality of care and the safety of patients are critical elements in the provision of care. Nursing practitioners have to ensure quality and safety get achieved to ensure patient satisfaction with the care that gets provided as well as nurse satisfaction to achieve positive outcomes in care provision. This paper seeks to examine the provided scenario and discuss how applying the nursing quality indicators can help nurses in the scenario in the identification of issues that may interfere with patient care and examine the nursing quality indicators and discuss how the data collected by the hospital regarding the identified indicators can advance the quality of care and ensure the safety of patients.
Application of nursing quality indicators
There are several ways through which nurses can apply the nurse quality indicators in the identification of the issues that may hinder the delivery of quality care to the patients. In the presented case scenario, the nurses can use the nurse quality indicator, patient satisfaction to identify the issue of the negligence of the staff in the organization in that, from the complaints by several patients, it is clear that patient satisfaction is not achieved as the staff are negligent regarding the meals of the patients and end up having the patients consume the food that they do not eat (Connolly & Wright, 2017). In this case, the cultural needs of the patient, who is a Jew, were not considered as he was given pork in his diet, which is against his religious beliefs. The issue that the nurses can identify from this nursing quality indicator is that the needs of the patients are not met, and the staff is negligent as they take the dietary requests from patients for granted, as evidenced by complaints from various patients.
Another nursing quality indicator that is evident and can be applied by nurses in this scenario in the identification of issues that hinder quality care is the complications, which in this case, is the hospital-acquired condition. The red depressed area that the daughter of the patient noticed was clearly acquired during the time the patient was in the hospital. The fact that the certified nursing assistant was informed but brushed it off stating that it would go away, without looking into it to identify what the cause could have been was an indication of negligence on the part of the nurse (Foley & Christensen, 2016). The problem that this nursing quality indicator helps identify is that the needs of the patients are not attended to fully, and their safety is ignored by the nurse practitioners. The safety of the patient, in this case, is put at risk by the negligence of the staff hindering the delivery of care that is quality.
How hospital data on the specific nursing quality indicators could advance the quality of patient care
The data on the nursing quality indicator, the incidence of pressure ulcers could be used to establish the cause of their occurrence among the patients. Once the cause gets determined, the information can be used to create a treatment or other ways of managing the problem, which can significantly help in the improvement of the care quality in the organization as a whole. The data by the hospital on the nursing quality indicator, the prevalence of restraints can play a significant role in the advancement of the quality of care. This can be done in such a way that the hospital can establish better ways of handling patients in that they will not require restraints. They can come up with better strategies for monitoring patients to ensure that they do not feel like prisoners in the course of receiving care in the hospital. The hospital data helps the organization figure out ways to better ensure the safety of patients and deliver quality in the provision of care.
Resolving an ethical issue in the scenario
The ethical issue that arises from the scenario is negligence on the part of the staff in the hospital, including the nurses and the staff in charge of the dietary needs of the patients (Foley & Christensen, 2016). As a nursing shift supervisor, the resources that I would put in place in resolving the ethical issue include the nursing code of ethics which I will use to remind the nursing staff of their duties to their patients and their role in ensuring the safety of patients in the course of care delivery. Another way is by using the education programs to train nurses on how to ensure the safety of patients by equipping them with the necessary skills to be able to meet all the needs of patients in the organization (Savage, 2017). Solving this issue will require the help of the management of the organization, the physicians, and other nurse practitioners.
Conclusion
It is critical that healthcare providers ensure that all the bases get covered in the provision of care to patients in the organization. The quality of care and safety of patients should be guaranteed to achieve patient satisfaction and positive outcomes of care. Failure to provide quality treatment and service that is critically needed for the safety of patients and other negligent acts can lead the organization and nurse practitioners into facing legal issues raised by the patients that feel like the nurses have been negligent in their duties.
References
Connolly, D., & Wright, F. (2017). The nursing quality indicator framework tool. International journal of health care quality assurance.
Foley, M., & Christensen, M. (2016). Negligence and the Duty of Care: A Case Study Discussion. Singapore Nursing Journal, 43(1).
Savage, T. A. (2017). Ethical issues in school nursing. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 22(3), 79.