Nursing-Sensitive Indicators: Identifying Issues That Interfere With Patient Care - Research Paper

The healthcare industry has witnessed an upcoming development, which involves the application of nursing-sensitive indicators to evaluate the quality of care of patients in hospitals. Nursing-sensitive indicators are a set of principles used to evaluate performance and also deliberated to assist a variety of hospitals in assessing the scope to which nursing involvement influence the safety of patients, their quality, and the professional environment in which they perform their job.

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Some of the values that conform to nursing-sensitive indicators are the satisfaction of staff nurses, contentment of patient with educational information, management of pain, nursing care, and complete care. Others are a number of patients who develop pressure and ulcer after admission, the fall of patients, nosocomial infections, overall nursing-care hours given per patient day, and the mixture of nurses and staff who lack license but are caring for patients in the acute caring setting.

Nosocomial Infections

Nosocomial infections are infections that patients acquire after being admitted to the hospital; they are usually developed due to inpatient treatment (Khan, Baig, & Mehboob, 2017). Nosocomial infections are one of the nursing-sensitive indicators and enable nurses to identify infection among the patients admitted to the hospital that could be detrimental to their care. In this case, it could have helped nurses to identify the development of reddish and depression area in Mr J lower spine resembling intense sunburn as described by his daughter and after that inflict fundamental measures. Nosocomial Infections are detrimental as it leads to prolonged stay in the hospital, reduces the quality of life, increases emotional stress, and may result in death (Kurutkan, Kara, & Eraslan, 2015).

Overall Nursing-Care Hours Given Per Patient Day

The term refers to the number of high-yielding hours dedicated by the registered nurses in performing patients care responsibilities for every single in-patient in every month. The amount of hours determines the quality of care given to patients and is used to evaluate the quality improvement of patients. Moreover, it helps nurses to identify the problems the patient is encountering. In Mr J Case, if the nurse had spent more time on him, the nurse could have noted his difficulty of wanting to remove restraint so that he can be assisted to the bathroom.

Management of Pain

Standard rules relating to the management of pain are fundamental as it assists nurses in treating the pain. The nurses apply conventional analgesics and non-pharmacological intervention, which are found in the protocol. Also, the rules enable the nurses to advise patients on when to take oral analgesia and the importance of requesting for extra analgesia if necessary. This advice assists the patients in taking more responsibility in managing their pain. Sufficient pain management is essential in speeding up healing since the goal for patients is to get mobilize both early. For Mr J case, after the nurse had administered pain medication for the fractured hip, he or she should have advised the patient on the best ways possible to manage the pain; for instance, the frequency of taking drugs by the patient.

Patient With Educational Information

Provision of constructive patient's education is essential in ensuring that people receive holistic care. It authorizes individuals towards health-seeking behaviors and self-care, resulting in a healthy life and easy recovery. Moreover, the provision of sufficient patient's education plays a critical role in all features of care from prevention to treatment. Nurses educate the admitted patients and their families by giving information that can be understood well and appropriate in promoting awareness and optimal health (Karim, 2015). This nursing quality indicator could have played a significant role in Mr J daughter when her father requested her to remove the restrained so that he could be helped to the bathroom. Instead of calling the nurse, the daughter could have assisted personally if the nurse had given sufficient information to Mr J and her daughter.

The Satisfaction of Staff Nurses and Other Staffs

Healthcare institutions have established that there is a relationship between the satisfaction of nurses and patients' outcomes. Nursing staff that works for long hours in poor conditions and serve the highest number of patients are likely to make more errors than those who have more resources and more staffing to prevent burnout. Job dissatisfaction among nurses affects the patient's quality of care. Job satisfaction among nurses and other staff enables them to reduce errors in their profession, and other errors like Mr J food mix up (Walker, 2018).

Therefore, it is fundamental to increase the number of staff nurses to lessen burden and reduce burnout which leads to job dissatisfaction; this contributed a lot in Mr J case since if the number of nurses was enough, one could have been monitoring patients when consuming their meals and Mr J could not have been left alone to eat. The issue of food mix up could have been noted earlier since Jews do not consume pork meat. Hence, better cognizance of nursing-sensitive indicators such as job satisfaction of nurses and other staff could have played an influential role in improving the quality of patient care and more so to Mr J.

Examine How Hospital Data Of Particular Nursing-Quality Indicators (Like Incidence Of Pressure Ulcers And Prevalence Of Control) Could Strengthen Quality Patient Care Throughout The Hospital.

Pressure ulcers (PUs), are concentrated injuries inflicted to the skin or underlying tissue usually over a bony projection, because of pressure, or pressure together with shear" (Rutherford et al., 2018). Pressure ulcers can occur inside the body due to prolonged sitting or lying firmly in one position without a reduction in pressure. The importance of keeping data in hospitals on pressure ulcers is to enable healthcare professionals to institute support surface such as changing the position of patients at a given time to reduce pressure and giving out equipment's that allow patients to distribute pressure. Pressure distribution equipment assists the patients in lowering pressure and protecting the delicate parts of the body (Rutherford et al., 2018).

The existence of data on restraint could lead to an improvement in the quality of care since it enables the nurses to understand the importance of restraint. Restraint prevents patients from injuring himself and others, removing equipment's put in the bodies such as oxygen masks, and nasogastric tubes hence promoting quality healthcare (Kalula & Petros, 2016). Moreover, it enables the nurse to know the process of care and structures applied in care, monitor how the patients are continuing to improve in health, and aiding in support based decision making. Lastly, it is used in knowing the functions of nurses in determining patient's safety outcome by evaluating the structure-process outcome, structure outcome, and process outcome.

Examine The Particular System Resources, Referrals, Or Colleagues That You, As The Nursing Shift Supervisor, Could Apply To Solve An Ethical Issue In This Setting.

Nursing shift supervisors usually tackle a variety of responsibilities and face the most ethical issues when they are deciding on making a choice. The answers may be unclear, and the option to be taken may not be appropriate. The outcome may be moral distress, problematic clinical relationships, and reduction in the quality of patient care. For shift supervisor to address these issues, he or she should depend on the American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics (Kalula & Petros, 2016).

In Mr J case, the individuals to take part in solving the issue are dietary worker, Mr J's daughter, the physician, and the registered nurse who was supposed to take care of Mr J that particular time. The nurse should elaborate on why he or she was not near when the patient was consuming his food and only arrived late when the patient was satisfied. The dietary worker should explain what factors lead to the mix-up. After listening to the individual response on the subject matter, an investigation on how the issues came up should be taken, and measures to address it should be put in place. The administrators of the hospital setting should give an apology to Mr J and advice dietary worker and nurses to be responsible so that the problem cannot arise in future.

References

Kalula, S. Z., & Petros, S. G. (2016). Use of physical restraint in hospital patients: A descriptive study in a tertiary hospital in South Africa. Curationis, 39(1). https://doi.org/10.4102/curationis.v39i1.1605

Karim, N. (2015). Provision of effective patient education: A learning clinical experience. Retrieved from https://rn-journal.com/journal-of-nursing/provision-of-effective-patient-education

Khan, H. A., Baig, F. K., & Mehboob, R. (2017). Nosocomial infections: Epidemiology, prevention, control and surveillance. Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine, 7(5), 478-482. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2221169116309509

Kurutkan, M. N., Kara, O., & Eraslan, I. H. (2015). An implementation on the social cost of hospital acquired infections. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, 8(3), 4433-4445, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4443201/

Rutherford, C., Brown, J. M., Smith, I., McGinnis, E., Wilson, L., Gilberts, R., ... Nixon, J. (2018). A patient-reported pressure ulcer health-related quality of life instrument for use in prevention trials (PU-QOL-P): Psychometric evaluation. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12955-018-1049-x

Walker, A. (2018). Nursing satisfaction impacts patient outcomes, mortality. Retrieved from https://nurse.org/articles/nursing-satisfaction-patient-results/