Summary
Modern health systems are known to be highly interwoven systems and are often characterized as messy. The quality and safety of health care provided to patients can be improved by implementing evidence-based practice techniques by the nurse leaders to improve the population health within the community they serve. Nurses are a critical part of health systems as a whole, and quality patient outcomes are at the forefront when considering the efficient running of these complex health systems. Other than California, which has passed staffing laws, more and more states are admitting to how critical nurse numbers in hospitals are for the care of patients and the advancement of the field of nursing.
Quality and Safety
According to the World Health Organization, a lot of patients die every year due to unsafe care while admitted to hospitals. The number of nurses employed greatly determines the health care outcomes of a patient. The under-employment of nurses in a hospital is associated with a higher risk of occurrence of adverse events and a diminished quality of care. Patient safety is very important in ensuring a high level of quality care in hospitals due to fewer clinical rotations and overworking the available staff members. Nurses are the principal stakeholders and an important workforce who are playing a critical part in the dialogue on the quality of health care and the safety of patients in hospitals. In the United States, the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators is used when measuring the quality of nursing care. The database provides reports on structure, process and outcome indicators used in evaluating nursing care.
Evidence-Based Practice
The implementation of evidence-based practice models by nurses and other healthcare providers in order to incorporate the best evidence into their clinical practice. This increases a patient’s quality of care and helps in managing the costs associated with healthcare. In establishing circumstances that nurture evidence-based practice, the results point to increased job satisfaction for nurses hence decreasing the rate of turnover, there is the betterment of patient outcomes, and a decrease in the cost of health care (Belrhiti et al., 2018).
Applied Leadership
A clinical leader employs clinical competence in their sphere of influence. They apply their social skills in support of nurses in order to provide top-notch patient care. There is an increase in the turnover of nurses and staff burnout is a contributor to this. The engaging staff warmly and wisely through transformational leadership is considered a brilliant strategy. Transformational leadership is known for delegating and thus encouraging teamwork among staff (Wu et al., 2020). Teamwork contributes to high-quality care for patients due to the curtailing of work-related stress.
Transformational leaders respectfully encourage the expression of personal views, promote personal self-value and the feeling of being immersed in important work, and thus see an increase in the quality of patient outcomes as nurses are more engaged in their roles (Stanley & Stanley, 2018). Understanding clinical management and how clinical managers are partly responsible for health service is essential in impacting innovation and thus increasing the quality of care.
Community and Population Health
A field that is the center of attraction when it comes to tackling the symbiotic relationship between the increase in the cost of healthcare and a reduction in reimbursements is population health. Contrary to many opinions, the oversight of the overall health of a community is population health. Electronic health records or EHRs have the capacity to advance the health of a community through the organization and subsequent analysis of the huge amount of population data. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Public Health Data Standards Consortium (PHDSC) completed the standardization of patient case reports (Kruse et al., 2018). These case reports will provide access to population health data to survey for capability in the improvement of the health of a community.
The records can also become a preventive measure for potential health threats by taking advantage of and consolidating Electronic Health Records in scrutiny and care mediation. These interventions can assist in providing health to the community served. Kruse et al. (2018) found that EHRs demonstrated compelling and effective results which included improved scrutiny of highly infectious diseases, progressive management of chronic diseases, and identification of populations with higher risk factors. Electronic health records can increase the productivity of nurses through efficiency and thus increase the quality of health service to the public.
Personal Reflections
When I was young and visited my grandmother, who was admitted to a local general hospital due to her advanced Alzheimer’s, it was a sad sight watching her. The hospital was understaffed with nurses, which led to the ones available being extremely overworked and easily burned out. The nurse manager at the time was all about following rules and didn’t heed the opinions or suggestions made by his subordinates. There was extremely low morale among the staff and one could see clearly that they didn’t enjoy their work and most just came to work for the paycheck, which was nothing to smile about. The patient records kept getting misplaced, mixed and even lost. It was at this moment, in my early teens, watching my grandmother, that I decided to become a nurse to try to do my part in helping the community around my neighborhood by providing quality and safe healthcare.
References
Belrhiti, Z., Geralt, A. N., & Marchal, B. (2018). Complex Leadership in Healthcare: A Scoping Review. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 7(12), 1073-1084. Web.
Kruse, C. S., Stein, A., Thomas, H., & Kaur, H. (2018). The use of Electronic Health Records to Support Population Health: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Journal of Medical Systems, 42(11), 214. Web.
Stanley, D., & Stanley, K. (2018). Clinical leadership and nursing explored: A literature search. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 27(9-10), 1730-1743. Web.
Wu, X., Hayter, M., Lee, A. J., Yuan, Y., Li, S., Bi, Y., Zhang, L., Cao, C., Gong, W., & Zhang, Y. (2020). A positive spiritual climate supports transformational leadership as means to reduce nursing burnout and intent to leave. Journal of Nursing Management, 28(4), 804-813. Web.