NUR 630 Overview of Quality in Health Care

NUR 630 Overview of Quality in Health Care

A health care organization’s core mandate is to provide the necessary environment and resources for quality care. Patient safety should also be a primary consideration. As health care organizations strive to achieve such goals, process and outcome challenges dominate routine care. As a result, care quality and safety concerns are typical and require health care professionals to devise innovative solutions to address them appropriately. Quality improvement is also crucial as processes become inefficient over time. The purpose of this paper is to describe a familiar patient safety concern and how evidence-based practice, research, and performance improvement (PI) would be utilized to address the issue. Other discussion areas include data sources, dissemination, and organizational culture considerations.

The Issue and Associated Challenges

Patients visit health care organizations looking forward to accurate diagnosis and treatment. They also hope to get appropriate support and treatment with the dignity and respect they deserve. Unfortunately, patient neglect has been a genuine patient safety concern due to nurse burnout stemming from the influx of COVID-19 patients. The COVID-19 pandemic has altered many practice dynamics, including workplace routines and roles designated to nurses. Rose et al. (2021) found that dealing with the pandemic has adversely affected nurses’ mental, emotional, and physical health due to increased workload and uncertainty about the end of the pandemic. Besides, many nurses worry about getting infected and infecting their families and friends. As a result, most of them lack the motivation to engage in pandemic management in health care settings (Rose et al., 2021). Nurse burnout and lack of motivation are the leading causes of patient neglect.

Patient neglect is associated with many challenges. It results in untreated medical conditions, leading to readmissions and extended hospital stays. Health costs increase proportionately with an increase in readmissions and hospital stays. Admitted patients are also likely to suffer from bedsores and atrophy. Patient neglect also leads to second victim syndrome. Ozeke et al. (2019) defined second victim syndrome as the shame, guilt, and compassion dissatisfaction characterizing nurses after committing errors. In this case, nurses feel guilty about their actions, disturbing them mentally and emotionally. This further intensifies nurse burnout and reduces motivation to engage in patient care.

Application of EBP, Research, and PI to Address Patient Neglect

Addressing patient neglect requires developing innovative solutions for nurse burnout. EBP would be utilized to find scientific evidence to integrate with clinical evidence and patient preferences to enhance patient outcomes (Chien, 2019). Utilizing EBP would first require developing a clinical question to address through the PICOT (problem, intervention, comparison, outcome, and time) approach. The problem is nurse burnout, and possible interventions include opportunities for self-care, resilience building, and increasing nursing staff. The expected outcome is preventing patient neglect. Time varies depending on resources and the scope of the EBP project. Utilizing self-care or resilience-building should achieve the desired results within six months.

Research implies generating new knowledge. Unlike EBP, which relies on the available evidence, research is intensive and time-consuming. The quest for new knowledge is crucial in discovering new advancements for promoting health and understanding issues in more detail (Chien, 2019). Unlike EBP and PI, research is not primarily about clinical issues, albeit the same objective- improving population health. Regarding patient neglect, research would focus on examining the factors reducing nurses’ motivation to engage in COVID-19 management. The knowledge gained can guide practice change through EBP projects, policymaking, or PI interventions.

Health care organizations should continually assess their performance and address current and emerging gaps. PI is the quest for better methods, processes, and outcomes. It is a framework for improving care by standardizing processes, reducing variations, and improving patient outcomes (Comfere et al., 2020). The primary focus areas include how care is delivered and the achieved results compared to the desired results. In addressing patient neglect, PI would be the foundation for improving patient experiences. Health care professionals would assess the current methods used in nurses’ motivation to participate in pandemic management and improve them to reduce nurse burnout as much as possible. Reducing nurse burnout would lead to better performance overall.

PI Process

PI is primarily about assessing performance gaps and utilizing proven strategies to