Nurses As Leaders For Quality Improvement Initiatives

In the article “What Do Nurses Really Do?”, Suzanne Gordon explores what nurses truly do. She concludes that nurses “save lives, prevent complications, prevent suffering, and save money” (Gordon 2006). Nurses provide care for their patients in the physical and emotional sense. Emotionally caring for a patient and being sensitive to his or her needs result from interacting with patients while performing the skills and using the knowledge that nurses learned in school. Nurses grow in their skills, knowledge, and attitudes through practice. Quality and safety education for nursing incorporates competencies that all nurses must use in their practice. These nursing competencies include evidence-based nursing practice, quality improvement, safety, teamwork and collaboration, patient-centered care, and informatics.

There are many way in which nurses could contribute leadership to improve the health care system to provide advance patient care. IOM states that, “serving as strong patient advocates, nurses must be involved in decision making about how to improve the delivery of care” (IOM, 2011, p. 222). In order to have a voice in the health care reform, nurses need to take opportunities to be involve in committees or board meetings and participate in making policies. The IOM “committee believes there will be numerous opportunities for nurses to help develop and implement care

The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Institute developed six core competencies: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics (Quality and Safety Education for Nurses Institute, 2017). At my facility, it is clearly evident that they have adopted these six core competencies to improve patient quality and safety. My facility created the Office of Patient Experience which supports care that is safe, of high quality and high value. Patient satisfaction is a top priority which is why our guiding principle is known as “Patients First”. Through teamwork and collaboration, we deliver care that is patient-centered by working together in multidisciplinary rounds on the inpatient units. Also, the nursing education department supports quality, safety and consistent nursing care through a database of policies and procedures developed using evidence-based research. Lastly, the nursing informatics department is working towards making our EPIC system more patient-centered. They are doing this by decreasing the redundancy in charting for the nursing staff and finding ways to improve processes which automate tasks. This in turn will reduce the time that the nursing staff spends with their computer and increase the time that the nursing staff can spend with their patients.

The IOM particularly points out the need for strong and capable leadership of nurses. The report says that the professional nurses must produce leaders at every level of the system and accept primary leadership positions in politics and organizations. The implementation of health care reformation expects that the nurses must exhibit leadership capacity and high-level collaborative skills in formulation of policies as well as in nursing practices. The nurses should prove their potentialities for contemporary, advancing high-quality patient care at every stage. IOM says that acquiring leadership qualities from the beginning to the end of the nursing profession is very crucial to achieve the affordable health care to everyone in the challenging socio economic situation. The report clearly calls each nurse to take responsibility to attain leadership qualities to plan, implement and be a mentor of the society. Nurses should see themselves as critical leaders in decision making and adopting new policies to meet the prevailing

Over the past few decades, many drastic changes occurred in U.S health care delivery.   Our current healthcare trends demand nurses to take more active role in the health care decisions in hospital setting, long term care setting and in community healthcare setting. Since “nursing is based upon a body of knowledge that is always changing with new discoveries and innovation” Potter and Perry (2005), nursing profession is compelled to grow from being just a traditional bedside nurse. IOM’s future of nursing report which is released in 2010 calls nurses to be “more highly educated, diverse nursing workforce”.

My experience in both my previous career in nursing and human resources has dealt with approaches in quality improvement in patient safety and different metrics in the turning up organizational behavior as well as up swinging the operations of the organizations respectively. We live in a rapidly changing world, and healthcare industry is not exempted from it. Because I will be playing an indispensable role in the future, I am very interested on the concept of quality improvement and what not and identify possible future challenges and draw lessons from healthcare organizations that has spearhead innovative changes to providing healthcare by pursuing the triple dimensions of the improvement of healthcare in general that is Improving the patient experience of care (including quality and satisfaction); Enriching the health of populations; and Reducing the per capita cost of health care.

The third barrier discussed in the IOM’s Future of Nursing report was that nurses need to be full partners, with all other health care professionals, in order to redesign health care in the United States (IOM, 2010). To do this nursing education must add leadership aspects to the education programs. In doing this it will ensure that nurse are ready to actively participate and lead in decisions regarding healthcare

Nursing quality improvement activities are essential to the financial viability of an organization and to for the safety of care delivery.

This paper seeks to expand upon the 2010 Institute of Medicine’s report on the future of nursing, leading change, advancing health and illustrating its impact on nursing education, practice and leadership. There is an ongoing transformation in the healthcare system necessitated by the need to achieve a patient centered care in the community, public, and primary care settings in contrast to previous times. Nurses occupying vital roles in the healthcare system, need improvements in the areas mentioned above to

Nursing care delivery is defined as the way task allocation, responsibility, and authority are organized to achieve patient care. Tiedeman and Lookinland (2004) suggested that systems of nursing care delivery are a reflection of social values, management ideology, and economic considerations. (Tiedeman&Lookinland, 2004) According to Fewer (2006), the quality of nursing care delivery systems affects continuity of care, the relationship between nurse and patient, morale, nurse job satisfaction and educational preparation.(Fewer, 2006) Nurses are essential human resources to provide medical services with professional knowledge and skills in the healthcare setting. However, the registered nurse turnover rate has increased in recent years resulting

Changes in the Health Care System and the Practice of Nursing have become complex. Technological changes, complicated client needs, short hospital length of stay, and departure from acute care to community based care, all these changes have underscore the need for professional nurses to think critically in order to provide safe and effective client care. A better educated nursing workforce can provide good health education to patients and their families. The affordable care of 2010 has required the need for nurses to expand their role of practice to meet complicated patient demands. This has prompted the Institute Of Medicine to review the “Future of Nursing, Leading change and Advancing Health”. {Creasia & Fribery,2011}

As a competent registered nurse, my career goal is to become a healthcare quality improvement leader, a position that would enhance my commitment in promoting patient safety. I not only believe in enhancing the capacity of other care providers, but also in improving the quality of the healing environment for the benefit of both patients and their care providers. This means not only promoting collaboration with the multidisciplinary teams, but also building the necessary healing partnerships with our patients. To enhance the quality of the healing environment, I aspire to continue analyzing researches for evidence based practices and advocating for their actualization. I will continue focusing my time and energy in encouraging other nurses to improve their skills through formal education, so they can empower themselves as advocates of quality improvement for the benefit of their patients and coworkers.

Nurses demonstrate the core values of professionally caring for others in two different prospects. Huber (2014), notes that “nurses have two basic roles: care providers and care coordinators” (p. 3). Most significantly nurses are valued in the setting of patient care, while the coordinator role revolves around management and organizing care, using thinking skills to coordinate complex activities. Nursing is multifaceted, although direct quality patient care is of significance, a positive leader or manager is also essential to support the recent changes to healthcare requirements. Having the right blend of qualities is vital to becoming a

In the healthcare field, nursing leaders and managers face consistent issues in their respective practices that force them to alter the way they work and the way they think. In taking on a role as a leader within the field, nursing leaders and managers also take on the role of ensuring that work within an organization runs smoothly regardless of new issues that may arise in the healthcare arena. For instance, in today's healthcare environment, the issues of nurse shortage and nurse turnover have the capacity to alter the healthcare field and many of its respective branches and organizations should these problems not be managed properly by the leaders in the field. In viewing the issue at hand and in discovering how nursing leaders and managers are expected to act, and do act, in order to approach this issues, along with pinpointing the best approach possible to aid this issue, one can better understand which leadership styles are necessary for leaders to function.

Florence Nightingale introduced the importance of quality nursing care back in the 1850s, when she started using her knowledge of statists to evaluate the quality of nursing practices and patient outcomes (Burston, Chaboyer & Gillespie, 2013). Patient lives are impacted by the quality of nursing care delivered to them. Quality is defined by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) as “continually reducing the burden of illness, injury, and disability, and improving health and functioning by pursuing six major aims – safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficacy, and equity (2001). Nurses drive care practices that advance patients’ outcomes and enable effective inter professional partnership, while stewarding the efficient and effective use of resources (Dailey & Peterson, 2014). The profession is critical to the provision of better quality care coordination.