Nursing-Quality Indicators

1. Discuss how the application of nursing-quality indicators could assist the nurses in this case in identifying issues that may interfere with patient care.

Nursing-sensitive indicators play a critically significant role in today’s bedside nursing. They comprise care provided to patients, policies, procedures, and staffing qualifications, including experience and education (Erickson, 2017). Besides, they provide a means of measuring patient satisfaction. Identifying nursing-quality indicators would help the hospital acquire inside information concerning the problem at hand relating to nursing care. Data related to each of the indicators such as types and number of nosocomial diseases, or the prevalence of pressure injuries in a hospital within a specific time-span. These data would then help the nurse to identify significant problems affecting a patient. In Mr. J’s case, the hospital management showed dangerous ignorance on patient care, such as wrong dietary tray delivery and unnecessary restrain, leading to pressure injuries (Kapp, 2012). There is a possibility that Mr. J’s length of hospital stay had been elongated due to lack of sufficient regarding the essential nursing-sensitive indicators. 

2. Analyze how hospital data on specific nursing-sensitive indicators (such as incidence of pressure ulcers and prevalence of restraints) could advance quality patient care throughout the hospital. 

  Data collection about the negative implications of restraints or hospital-acquired pressure ulcers would enable the hospital to identify the intensity of the problem more objectively and develop an improvement plan. If the hospital chooses to incorporate its improvement plan, it will use nursing-quality indicators to measure scale (Erickson, 2017). For instance, the hospital will use data from HAPUs to identify patents that have a higher likelihood of developing ulcers and formulate measures against its development. The data about the adverse implications of restraints would be used to identify patients who are more likely to be at risk. New improvement plans are then evaluated and incorporated based on the prevalence of adverse events related to specific indicators (Montalvo, 2017). Incorporation of an effective improvement plan would improve patients’ outcomes, shorten the length of hospital stay, increase patients’ and family’s satisfaction, and decrease the cost of treatment and hospitalization, hence increasing revenue.

3. Analyze the specific system resources, referrals, or colleagues that you, as the nursing shift supervisor, could use to resolve the ethical issue in this scenario.

The scenario involves a confused Jewish patient that was supposed to feed only on kosher food served a regular diet order of pork. Upon raising the complaint, the nurse responded rudely to his daughter that pork never killed a person. Probably, the nurse did not regard this seriously as the mistake was not medical in nature. However, the nurse acted oblivious of cultural awareness, which is unethical. An improvement plan for correcting this error required a team with exceptional expertise. If I were the nursing supervisor, I would include a primary physician, a chaplain, a certified nurse student, and a staff nurse in my improvement committee. 

The chaplain’s role would be to provide inside information concerning specific religious beliefs on this case and explain the gravity of the diet problem. The primary physician would provide essential information about the patient’s social history that would have been considered during the admission process. The staff nurse would look into the possible reasons that would have led to the oversight during the ordering. The certified nursing assistant would provide ideas for not addressing the problem during his/her direct responsibility for feeding the patient. The improvement plan that I would establish would incorporate education on cultural sensitivity. I would also gather information to find the possible reason for the occurrence of such preventable mistakes without blaming the victims of the circumstance. Nursing-indicators are critical in today’s healthcare as they act as a gauge for measuring the quality of care received by the patients (Kapp, 2012). A nurse that has sufficient knowledge on nursing-sensitive indicators will provide more excellent quality care for the betterment of patients’ outcomes, which will, in turn, result in improved satisfaction.

References

Erickson, J. (2017). Nursing-sensitive indicators paint vivid picture of organizational commitment. Retrieved from http://www.mghpcs.org/eed_portal/Documents/Caring_NSIs_0411.pdf

Kapp, Marshall B. (2016) “Physical Restraint Use in Acute Care Hospitals: Legal Liability Issues,” Marquette Elder’s Advisor: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 4. Retrieved from  http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/elders/vol1/iss1/4

Montalvo, I. (2017). The National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators® (NDNQI®). The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing,12(3). Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Volume122007/No3Sept07/NursingQualityIndicators.html