Safety Initiatives Essay Paper

The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate how your role as a nurse and a nurse leader supports the alignment of quality improvement and safety initiatives. Portions of this assignment will be utilized in your final paper.

Assignment Instructions – Quality Improvement and Safety Initiatives

(3-4 pages)

Consider your identified healthcare issue (SWOT Analysis) topic as a quality improvement and safety initiative.

Discuss how your healthcare issue aligns with quality improvement (QI) and safety initiatives.
Reflect on your role as both a nurse and a nurse leader as identified in your SWOT Analysis. Identify how your role as a nurse and nurse leader aligns with quality improvement and safety initiatives.
Identify your accountability as a healthcare provider in addressing the identified healthcare issue in relationship to quality improvement and safety initiatives.
What evidence-based healthcare practices apply to your identified healthcare issue in relationship to quality improvement and safety initiatives?
Paper is to be written in APA format.
Additional Assignment Instructions: Below is a list of the 6 sections to include in your submission:

Introduction and Identification of Quality Improvement and Safety Initiative- Provide an introduction and identification of your identified healthcare issue (SWOT Analysis). Provide a discussion on how your healthcare issue aligns with quality improvement and safety initiatives.
The Role of the Nurse and Nurse Leader: Reflect on your identified role as a nurse and nurse leader within the SWOT Analysis. Provide a discussion on how the identified role as a nurse and nurse leader aligns with quality improvement and safety initiatives.
Accountability as a Healthcare Provider- Provide a discussion on the accountability as a healthcare provider in addressing the identified healthcare issue in relationship to quality improvement and safety initiatives. 2-3 examples provided with support from at least 1 scholarly source.
Application of Evidence-Based Practices: Provide a discussion of 2-3 examples of evidence-based practices that apply to the identified healthcare issue in relationship to quality improvement and safety initiatives. Support from at least 1 scholarly source provided.
Conclusion: Provide a discussion that summarizes all components of the paper. The discussion provides conclusive comments that reflect on prior components without introducing new topics.
APA: The paper is submitted in proper APA format and within the 2-3-page limit (excluding the title and reference page).

Safety Initiatives

Introduction and Identification of Quality Improvement and Safety Initiative

Falls are perhaps the most persistent serious, common and preventable problems in any health care setting. In fact, fall rates range between 1.3/1,000 inpatient days to 8.9/1,000 inpatient days. About 30% of fall result in serious injury for the patients. A significant concern of falls is the resultant adverse economic, social and clinical outcomes for the patients, institutions, and medical personnel. Safety Initiatives Essay Paper  The health care industry recognizes that falls are a concern, and attention has been targeted at preventing falls (Goldsack et al., 2015). SWOT analysis results for the present organization reveals that falls are a cause of concern for the facility. To address this concern, a nurse hourly rounding system has been proposed as an appropriate solution. The present paper discusses the application of a nurse hourly rounding system as a quality improvement and safety initiative for effectively reducing patient falls incidences.

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The facility offers inpatient medical services that are required by patients who require close monitoring and intensive medical care and attention. The facility helps the patients to improve their health and wellness while offering them a safe environment. Assessing falls risks and implementing proactive fall prevention strategies is the direct responsibility of nurses. However, their efforts are hindered by the reality of nurse personnel shortages as well as challenges in identifying the causal factors that can be targeted for more effective interventions. The quality improvement and safety initiative seeks to address these concerns by implementing a nurse hourly rounding system that would allow nurses to attend to the personal and immediate needs of the patients while implementing routine fall precautions. The intervention will act as a fall prevention strategy by improving the safety and satisfaction of patients through a proactively organized nursing program (Morgan et al. 2016). The program would orient the patients to the environment in the facility, ensuring that beds are at the patient’s approximate level or lowest position, providing mobility aids (such as wheelchairs, walkers and canes), providing for toileting needs, ensuring proper lighting, keeping hearing and seeing aids clean and on the patient, and keeping commonly used items within reach (McEwen & Wills, 2018).

The program creates nurse awareness of the behaviors and abilities of the patients, while reducing the risks in the care environment. The hourly rounding intervention provides a structured way of fostering communication within the health care setting while promoting patient centered safety intervention that improve the care outcomes. The quality of care and patient safety are priority concerns, and important in keeping with government regulations. Establishing and maintaining a safe care environment means that patient falls are prevented while creating awareness of the surroundings, ensuring effective communication, reporting and sharing ideas, and using critical thinking and nursing judgement to anticipate and prevent falls (Linehan, 2018).

Role of the Nurse and Nurse Leader

The nurses and nurse leaders recognize that patients’ safety and care quality cannot be dictated from the top. Nurses and nurse leaders are full partners with other medical personnel in redesigning health care in the facility. Full partnership helps nurses and nurse leaders to stand out in promoting patient safety and organizational quality initiatives. This speaks to leadership transformation in the nursing profession. In addition, effective policy making and workforce planning for nurses requires comprehensive data and information collection. This speaks to the need for nurses and nurse leaders to be engaged in collecting meaningful data on health care quality and workforce indicators that inform planning for necessary changes to the care delivery system (Black, 2016). Besides that, nurses and nurse leaders are well positioned in the organization to lead and partner with other medical personnel in implementing the fall prevention strategies since they are knowledgeable about the issue and have much contact with the patients and other personnel. In fact, they are visible in the clinical units and effectively communicate by sharing their vision of excellence (Raingruber, 2017). Overall, nurses and nurse leaders bring the nursing perspective and communicate the specifications of the initiative to other medical staff.

Accountability as a Healthcare Provider

For nurses, as health care providers, preventing patient falls in the midst of providing excellent care is an ethical responsibility. The proposed quality improvement and safety initiative is driven by the nurses’ professional values and professional accountability. Nurses have a traditional commitment to improving care quality, and this comes into play long before quality becomes a concern at the organization level. In fact, nurses are typically the first to recognize and express concerns about inappropriate health care systems that jeopardize care quality and the lives of patients. As professionals and individuals, nurses have an interest in health care quality as it gives them the hope that their concerns would be heard, their patients will be safe, and they will be able to provide care that they would be proud of. The quality improvement and safety initiative is an opportunity for nurse to take the lead in using nursing expertise in patient care to redesign a health care system that was failing by reporting falls among patients at the facility (Fawcett, 2016).

Application of Evidence-Based Practices

Falls are an issue of concern due to the associated adverse outcomes, and indications of compromised care. In fact, falls are noted to cause injury, diminished functional ability, loss of independence and even death among patients. Hourly rounding is identified as a possible solution that would allow the nurses to regularly monitor the patients at risk of falling and ensure that any fall risk factors are identified and addressed (Linehan, 2018). Morgan et al. (2016) makes similar observations in noting that hourly rounding allows nurses to conduct checks on patients at set times to assess and manage their fundamental care needs. In fact, hourly rounding helps to determine the ongoing needs and assistance. In this respect, the reviewed evidence reveals that hourly rounding would be an effective strategy for reducing falls.

Conclusion

One must accept that patient falls is a source of concern in health care owing to the associated adverse events. In addition, one must acknowledge that hourly rounding presents an opportunity for nurses to reduce fall incidences by proactively identifying and addressing the risk factors for falls. In applying hourly rounding as a quality improvement and safety initiative, nurses get an opportunity to act as leaders who promote patient safety, and engage in informatics activities by collecting and using comprehensive data. Also, the initiative allows nurses to be accountable for health care improvement as regards professional values. Overall, evidence suggests that nurse hourly rounding would help to reduce fall incidences.

Assignment Overview:

The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate how your role as a nurse and a nurse leader supports the alignment of quality improvement and safety initiatives.  Portions of this assignment will be utilized in your final paper.

Assignment Instructions – Quality Improvement and Safety Initiatives

(3-4 pages)

Consider your identified healthcare issue (SWOT Analysis) topic as a quality improvement and safety initiative.

1. Discuss how your healthcare issue aligns with quality improvement (QI) and safety initiatives.
2. Reflect on your role as both a nurse and a nurse leader as identified in your SWOT Analysis. Identify how your role as a nurse and nurse leader aligns with quality improvement and safety initiatives.
3. Identify your accountability as a healthcare provider in addressing the identified healthcare issue in relationship to quality improvement and safety initiatives.
4. What evidence-based healthcare practices apply to your identified healthcare issue in relationship to quality improvement and safety initiatives?
5. Paper is to be written in APA format.

Additional Assignment Instructions: Below is a list of the 6 sections to include in your submission:

• Introduction and Identification of Quality Improvement and Safety Initiative- Provide an introduction and identification of your identified healthcare issue (SWOT Analysis).  Provide a discussion on how your healthcare issue aligns with quality improvement and safety initiatives.
• The Role of the Nurse and Nurse Leader: Reflect on your identified role as a nurse and nurse leader within the SWOT Analysis.  Provide a discussion on how the identified role as a nurse and nurse leader aligns with quality improvement and safety initiatives.
• Accountability as a Healthcare Provider- Provide a discussion on the accountability as a healthcare provider in addressing the identified healthcare issue in relationship to quality improvement and safety initiatives. 2-3 examples provided with support from at least 1 scholarly source.
• Application of Evidence-Based Practices: Provide a discussion of 2-3 examples of evidence-based practices that apply to the identified healthcare issue in relationship to quality improvement and safety initiatives. Support from at least 1 scholarly source provided.
• Conclusion: Provide a discussion that summarizes all components of the paper. The discussion provides conclusive comments that reflect on prior components without introducing new topics.
• APA: The paper is submitted in proper APA format and within the 2-3-page limit (excluding the title and reference page).  Safety Initiatives Essay Paper