Organizational and Leadership Strategies to Improve Patient Safety and Quality

Organizational and Leadership Strategies to Improve Patient Safety and Quality

Patient safety in quality care in the care environment is one of the central focuses of healthcare facilities. Therefore, a proactive healthcare facility is usually engaged in various quality improvement efforts, which involves identifying gaps in patient care and implementing relevant strategies to address the gaps (Whitfill et al.,2018). The initiation of such quality improvement gaps, implementation of relevant interventions, and sustaining the same heavily hinges on the kind of leadership in the organization. The implication is that the leaders play a critical role in improving patient care as they assume the role of the force that drives change initiatives.

As a benchmark, nursing leadership has various competencies that a nurse leader has to achieve to enable them to appropriately lead in the care environment and drive change for quality improvement. As such, an individual should assess themselves to identify their strengths and weaknesses in relation to the nurse leadership competencies for better leadership (Huber, 2017). The purpose of this week’s assignment is to explain the self-assessment and connected to nurse leadership competencies and describe the goals of nurse leadership development to be pursued. In addition, the importance of such goals will be described.

Self-Assessment In Relation to the Nurse Leadership Competencies

As earlier indicated, nurse leaders should be competent to offer effective leadership in the care environment, hence a need for self-assessment to identify potential individual strengths and weaknesses. As such, a self-assessment was undertaken in relation to the nurse leadership competencies. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA), the nurse leadership competencies include collaboration, communication, education, environmental health, ethics, evidence-based practice and research, leadership, resource utilization, quality of practice, and professional practice evaluations (Clipper & Dawson, 2018).

From the self-assessments, my strengths stood out in various competencies, while other competencies exposed various weaknesses. One of the competencies assessed was collaboration. From the results, this can be regarded as a major area of strength as I seamlessly collaborate with families and patients towards better care for them. In addition, I also effectively work together with other nurses and the management for collaborative relationships to improve patient care. However, the identified gap is in Interprofessional collaboration. I have to improve on how to collaborate with other healthcare professionals to improve care. In terms of communication competency, the assessment revealed strength is verbal and written communication. Besides, I have been able to concisely and clearly express ideas related to patient care. Good communication also involves attentively listening to what others are saying (Sibiya, 2018). This was exposed as an area of weakness as I have had a tendency to hurry others to talk faster when addressing issues. Therefore, such impatience negatively impacts communication efficiency.

I also performed a self-assessment in relation to environmental health. This is an area where I still have to develop competency to ensure that every nursing practice engaged in is healthy and environmentally safe. An environmentally safe environment will ensure that patients get quality care a good relationship exists between other professionals and myself (Huber, 2017). An assessment was also conducted on ethics. This was an area of strength as I have been able to demonstrate credibility, responsibility, and honesty as part of the elements displayed through integrity competency. However, a gap was identified in using ethical decision-making in clinical situations. There is still a need to further develop ethical decision-making in practice settings.

In terms of Evidenced-based practice and research, the self-assessments revealed the ability to integrate research findings and evidence into practice (Culyer et al., 2018). In addition to such indications, I have been able to demonstrate this competency through my learning capacity. The professional practice evaluations indicated high competency as I have been able to display self-development, self-insight, self-management, learning capacity, and self-awareness. However, I need to show adaptability to various situations to show a complete competency in the item. The self-assessment also revealed competency in quality of practice as I have displayed innovation and creativity to support quality improvement.

Goals for Nurse Leadership Development Goal

Self-assessment gives an individual an opportunity to grow by examining various weaknesses and strengths. Goals can then be formulated regarding the pursuant of nurse leadership development of interests. From the self-assessment, some of