QUALITY AND SUSTAINABILITY
Quality in healthcare refers to the best possible health outcomes when the resources and circumstances provided are consistent with patient-centered care. Quality measures are the tools used to determine the level of healthcare processes, patient perceptions, outcomes, systems as well as any other factor associated with the provision of high-quality care. Quality measures evaluate many factors across the full range of care setting, and that can be doctor’s offices, wards or even the imaging rooms. Safety, on the other hand, is the reduction of risks of all unnecessary harm and the risks are reduced to a minimum level.
Due to the increasing evidence on the number of patients that are harmed from their care either through permanent injury, death or increased length of stay, maintaining quality and safe care is essential for promoting patients outcome. From the previous studies, adverse events not only occur because patients are hurt by ill-intentioned people, but because of the healthcare setting where they receive their care. Therefore, it is necessary that nurses and other medical practitioners promote quality and safety culture in a healthcare facility so that the care given to patients can be of high quality (Barton, 2009). Patient safety can be described as freedom from harm or hazards that are associated with medical error, omission, commission or injury related to the environment of care.
Nurses are the key stakeholders in healthcare that improve the quality of health care by implementing patient safety interventions and strategies. Although quality healthcare is the overall term that covers patient safety, patient safety can sometimes appear individually in healthcare. Institute of Medicine support that patient safety cannot be distinguished from quality health care, and that quality depends on standards, norms and values set in a healthcare setting (Altmiller, 2013). Nevertheless, when safety is given prime importance in a healthcare setting, all the other factors including quality fall into place. When an organization lack awareness of safety, any other goal is pointless, and the quality of care can be compromised because safety is an attribute of quality of safety and products. Thus, quality and safety measures can be associated with the nursing practice since any services offered by the nurses can increase or reduce harm to patients (Bassuni & Bayoumi, 2015). Also, the working environment with which patients and care providers treat the patient can have a significant effect on the quality of care offered, thus consequently affecting patient outcome significantly.
Quality and safety measures are essential to healthcare because they promote patient outcome and ensure long-term health for nurses working within healthcare facilities. The standards minimize risks not only to patients but also to nurses who have close contact with those patients. Some of the quality standard measures used in healthcare include bar coding, use of simulators, computerized physician order entry. Leadership and culture congruence are some of the factors that can have a significant impact on safety and quality of care given in a hospital. A good leadership maintains a culture of safety and ensures that nurses working within those facilities are protected from infections and contamination (Grol, Wensing, Eccles & Davis, 2013). Quality and safety standards also improve teamwork and reduce nurse turnover rate because the nurses are protected from any form of hazard. Culture congruence calls for a culture that is safe and in such an environment, employees have safe working conditions and maintain safe practices.
The system of health care currently is complicated because it cannot be determined by the competency of an individual care provider. When there are many people involved in the treatment of care, the quality and safety of care are compromised. Achieving safety of care in such an environment is difficult unless the system of care is well designated to offer timely and complete information and all medical professionals well understand it. Patient safety is an issue affecting all countries that provide healthcare services, and since nurses have a close association with patients compared to other medical providers, they have critical responsibility to ensure quality and safe care to all patients (Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, 2011). Quality in healthcare is determined by the components of quality rather than measured indicators. For service to be of high quality, it should be safe, timely, patient-centered, equitable and efficient. Safety acts as the foundation upon which all other components of quality are built, and we cannot have quality care that is not safe. It is the role of nursing practitioners to mobilize all other care providers so that they can improve the quality and safety of United States healthcare.
The United States healthcare system is faced with increased pressure due to the growing demand for quality and safe care for all patients. Nurses are the instruments in the gains made during quality improvement in the healthcare system. Therefore, they are the key players in improving safety and quality of care. Quality and safety measures are applied in various ways in nursing science. According to IOM, most of the medical errors in healthcare are as a result of faulty processes and systems and not individual practitioners (Smeds-Alenius, 2016). The understanding of this allows nurses to ensure that the methods employed in nursing practice are efficient to avoid communication errors. In the contemporary health care system, patient information is contained in systems, and any error in the systems can ultimately lead to medical errors. Thus, reducing the safety of care provided. Ensuring the proper upholding of quality and safety standards during care is the goal of all nurses thus forms part of nursing science.
Safety in healthcare does not pertain to the wellness of patients alone but also that of nurses during care. In the contemporary healthcare system, nurses are at risk of hospital-acquired infections due to contaminated working areas and their close encounter with patients. Application of quality and safety measures in the nursing workplace has been crucial in the recent decade where nurses are advised to maintain safe practices while in the workplace. Nurses are encouraged to wear protective gear such as gloves and mask to avoid contamination and contracting infections from the facility (Bassuni & Bayoumi, 2015). To ensure that nurses are familiar with safety practices, the American Nurses Association developed a library that can be used by nurses as a guide for maintaining quality and safe practices while delivering care. Thus, quality and safety standards are used in promoting safety for nurses to protect them from hospital-acquired infections.
Errors are the most common factors associated with the quality and safety of care given to patients. Since either process or system failure causes the errors, quality and safety measures are employed as part of process-improvement techniques and system-improvement techniques. The systems must be maintained at high standards, and the processes must be pretested to ensure that the services offered through the systems and methods are of high standards. Besides, quality and safety measures are employed as part of effective communication between nurses and other care providers (Grol, Wensing, Eccles & Davis, 2013). Communication errors have been common causes of patient harm because they interfere with the medical care given to a patient by nurses. Quality and safety measures are currently being used to minimize communication errors between nurses and other healthcare providers. Therefore, quality and safety measures are used to reduce medical errors that are associated with poor communication between nurses and other medical providers.
When analyzing the healthcare program’s outcome, what should be considered is patients and workers satisfaction. Any program in a healthcare setup is aimed to improve patient outcome and therefore the satisfaction of the patients. A program that is satisfactory to patients should be safe and of high quality. The program should meet its primary objective of improving patient outcome and reducing the length of stay for patients. When analyzing a healthcare program outcome, safety is a component to consider. The program should meet all the safety standards for it to be successful in a healthcare setting (Aiken et al., 2012). The program should also be patient centered so that it can achieve its expected outcome. A patient-centered program is the one which aims to improve the outcome of patients while in healthcare.
A healthcare program should also provide the right material, certification and paperwork so that it can meet the expected outcome. The program should offer training to nurses and other healthcare workers so that it can be implemented successfully. All programs in healthcare should promote safety for patients and should be patient-centered so that they can achieve the common goal of healthcare. Quality and safety go hand in hand and quality cannot exist if the care provided is not safe. Therefore, quality and safety standards should be made part of nursing science so that all nurses can take part in promoting quality and safety of patient care.
References
Aiken, L. H., Sermeus, W., Van den Heede, K., Sloane, D. M., Busse, R., McKee, M., … & Tishelman, C. (2012). Patient safety, satisfaction, and quality of hospital care: cross sectional surveys of nurses and patients in 12 countries in Europe and the United States. Bmj, 344, e1717.
Altmiller, G. (2013). Application of the quality and safety education for nurses competencies in orthopaedic nursing: Implications for preceptors. Orthopaedic Nursing, 32(2), 98-103.
Barton, A. (2009). Patient safety and quality: An evidence‐based handbook for nurses. Aorn Journal, 90(4), 601-602.
Bassuni, E. M., & Bayoumi, M. M. (2015). Improvement critical care patient safety: using nursing staff development strategies, at Saudi Arabia. Global journal of health science, 7(2), 335.
Grol, R., Wensing, M., Eccles, M., & Davis, D. (Eds.). (2013). Improving patient care: the implementation of change in health care. John Wiley & Sons.
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. (2011). The RACGP Curriculum for Australian General Practice 2011.
Smeds-Alenius, L., Tishelman, C., Lindqvist, R., Runesdotter, S., & McHugh, M. D. (2016). RN assessments of excellent quality of care and patient safety are associated with significantly lower odds of 30-day inpatient mortality: a national cross-sectional study of acute-care hospitals. International journal of nursing studies, 61, 117-124.