The fields of nursing and health care undergo considerable changes and improvements all the time. Many areas could influence the progress of nursing practice and determine the quality of achievements. In this paper, the culture of safety, quality measures, and HCAHPS, as well as change strategies based on Lewin’s and Lippitt’s theories, will be discussed to enhance organizational development and assessment of potential threats and benefits.
Today, the commitment to safety turns out to be a crucial element of nursing and healthcare practice. According to the American Nurses Association (2016), a culture of safety defines core values and behaviors in leadership and management over the existing competing goals. Its influence on nursing and health care is significant because it underlines safety beliefs for all participants regardless of their knowledge or experience. Examples of organizational performance improvement are training, cooperation, and information exchange.
Another tool that has an impact on nursing is quality measures. It helps assess healthcare processes, outcomes, and systems in terms of which high-quality care is promoted. There are several initiatives of quality measures, including public reporting and quality improvement. For example, public reporting is effective in gathering information about the overuse or misuse of care services and predicting mistakes in the future. Hospitals are free to choose different standards to understand where positive outcomes are observed and where additional work is required.
There is a survey known as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) that could influence the healthcare sphere. This national instrument is applied to gather data about patients’ perceptions of their medical experiences within a particular hospital. Patients may be satisfied or dissatisfied with the offered care, and HCAHPS is used to identify these opinions. There are 27 questions related to different areas of hospital care. For example, a facility learns what patients think about the environment, its pain management methods, or the level of quietness. This information helps to improve the quality of care and understand what patients expect to have in hospitals.
When quality measures and techniques are used to identify problems or weaknesses of a facility, change strategies are applied. Organizational change is an essential step in hospital development, and a properly defined plan is required. The current project goal is to increase the level of patient satisfaction by communicating with them and their families. Stakeholders who support this effort are nurses, hospital leaders, and doctors because they want to obtain more personal information about patients and choose the necessary treatment plan. Lewis and Lippitt are the authors of change theories that can be offered.
The Lewis model sets the tone of change, and Lippitt’s approach identifies the steps and goals. Lack of strategic direction and individual change resistance are the barriers that could occur. To remove such issues, regular meetings and communication within a team are recommended to understand what achievements are made, what expectations emerge, and what resources are available.
The organizational assessment shows that any hospital has a chance to improve its performance and prove patients with the best healthcare and nursing services. As soon as measures are chosen, challenges may be discovered to understand what change is needed. Regular cooperation and information exchange help increase patient satisfaction, and its benefits and shortages are defined in a SWOT analysis form:
Reference
American Nurses Association. (2016). Culture of safety. Web.