Leadership in Nursing

Leadership in Nursing

The Leadership Learning Experience (LLE) is policy implementation in the hospital environment in terms of creating. The challenge that most hospitals face in the world today is the safety of patients. Patients need to be kept safe from injuries within the hospital and getting infections while still admitted in the hospital. Current hospital management is faced with the challenge of ensuring that the rate of hospital-acquired infections is maintained at a minimal. The leadership of the hospital today is tasked with ensuring that patients in hospitals are in a position to get better and receive the care they deserve. The issue that has come up recently is the rate of infections while patients are admitted in hospitals. The cause of the hospital-acquired infections is mainly blamed on the hand hygiene protocols that nurses observe. There are injuries that come about as a result of accidents in hospitals. The management of the hospital is expected to ensure that patients and nurses are kept safe. In nursing experience, it is necessary to develop strategies that will contribute to the reduction of the infection rates of hospital-acquired infections.

The nosocomial infections that occur in the hospital setting stand at 20% from the intensive care unit (Monegro & Regunath, 2018). It is ironical that people expect proper care while in hospital but ends up with infections that are caused by germs. When looking at the perspective of the nosocomial infections, they are caused by the failure of the hospital healthcare workers to adhere to proper health sanitization. According to research, 32% of the nosocomial infections are urinary tract infections, 22% are surgical site infections, 15% are lung infections, and 14% are bloodstream infections (Patient Carelink, 2018). This is a big problem in the medical field because it can be fatal.

The areas that contribute to the problem is the fact that the cleaning protocols are often overlooked for various reasons. The right cleaning protocols are usually two, cleaning hands using soap and water or alcohol-based sanitizers before and after attending to a patient. The challenge that comes up at this point is that most nurses fail to properly clean their hands. Additionally, the non-sanitized objects used in the hospital setting also transmit infections. The transmission of infections is possible when the caregivers are not dressed protectively when handling patients. Proper cleaning of the surgical sites may be done dismally. An infection to a surgical site often has people being admitted for longer by about 6 days. These are challenges that can be fixed.

The implementation of the proposal can be conducted in two years for the nurses and five years for the hospital structures. The hospital’s structures can be repaired effectively by ensuring that proper lighting is installed, floors are repaired, and proper markings and signage are installed as well. This will prevent minor and major patient accidents from occurring and reduce the cost on the hospitals that would go towards compensations. The research reports indicate that caring for patients in hospitals is not the sole responsibility of nurses but all the healthcare workers. The nurses can prevent infections in patients and save the hospital the cost of treating them when it could have been prevented. In a span of five years, any hospital with good and organized leadership will be in a position to respond to the recommendation raised in this report.

Nurses are the most important stakeholders in implementing these changes because they affect their working environment the most. With the support of nurses, they will adopt the methods of hand hygiene that is easiest and most effective for them. It will enhance their capability of caring for each patient without passing infections that could have been prevented. With proper infrastructure and signage, all the stakeholders in health care will be in a position to help stop hospital-acquired infections in patients while they are still admitted.

The evaluation of the success of these changes will be done by monitoring the number of patients who get infected while in admission. Constantly recording the numbers will enable the management to know whether progress is being made or not. As a scientist, evaluation and use of evidence helped me come to the conclusion that changes needed to be made in reducing the nosocomial infections in patients during admissions. As a detective, I was able to find out what the low levels of compliance in hand hygiene exist among nurses worldwide. In the position of the manager of the healing environment, I was able to find that it is possible to reverse the situation and make it better for the patients, the nurses, and the hospital as well. 

It is more economical for the hospital to effect the changes that will enhance the safety of the patients, rather than compensate all the patients who will report to having been infected due to the fault of the hospital. The most viable solution to these problems if is the challenges that face the nurses in cleaning up is solved. It is important that the leaders in any hospital setting incorporate nurses into creating implementable solutions to health care practices that will reduce the nosocomial infections in the future. In a study conducted by researchers, nurses reported to preferring using water and soap to clean up, rather than using hand sanitizers, as they are not washed off. The rates or infection should reduce in the hospital after the implementation of the following strategies;

• The nurses should have cleaning stations set up close to the patients. This will make it possible to clean up before and after handling each patient. 
• The dark areas of the hospital must be well lit and marked. 
• They should always have a nurse close to the patients incise of an accident. 
• Proper hygiene in the hospital must be adhered to.

Leadership in a hospital setting is a crucial role. It determines how efficient the services acquired from the said hospital will be. A good leader will find solutions to problems rather than finding people to blame. For instance, the nurses have admitted to preferring soap and water for hand hygiene. A good leader will ensure that water and soap are always available for nurses in hospitals at all times. It will save the lives of the patients in the end, as well as the hospital in terms of costs. Therefore, in the cost-benefit analysis, it makes more sense to ensure that patients are cared for and take no chances with their health.

References

Monegro, A., & Regunath, H. (2018). Hospital Acquired Infections. NCBI.

Patient Carelink. (2018). Healthcare-Acquired Infections (HAIs). Retrieved from Patient Carelink: https://patientcarelink.org/improving-patient-care/healthcare-acquired-infections-hais/