Policy or Practice in an Organization Influencing Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia

Policy or Practice in an Organization Influencing Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia

“If you want your organization to succeed, then you must first let your leaders succeed so that the team under them succeed.” (Aiyaz Uddin). Organizations have to develop policies and procedures reflecting their vision, values, and culture as well as the requirement of their employees, which serve as the key to the development of the organizational policies and procedures. An organization’s policy is an arrangement of restrictions that provide guidance, consistency, accountability, competency, and clarity on how an organization operates (Pebrianti et al., 2019). It is essential to update policies and procedures in an organization, as outdated policies can leave an organization at risk. Old policies may fail to comply with new laws and regulations and may not address new systems or technology, resulting in inconsistent practice. Organizational policies may be, however, disadvantageous as the rigid nature of business rules and regulations may make it challenging to implement changes as, by their nature, business rules tend to be inflexible and binary, creating a rigid framework for the employees. This essay will explore the competing needs impacting hospital-acquired pneumonia, a relevant policy or practice in a healthcare organization influencing hospital-acquired pneumonia, the policy for ethical considerations, and one policy to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients.

Competing Needs Impacting Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia

There are various competing needs impacting HAP. The first competing need impacting HAP is time demand, whereby time acts as an obstacle preventing medical personnel from completing patient care duties. In such a case, the care duties are completed within the needed time so that one can engage in other activities, such as hand washing (Valentine et al., 2022). Time being a limitation limiting the availability of hygiene stations, nurse-patient ratios and patient acuity requirements, there is a need to develop strategies to improve care delivery. Another competing need that impacts hospital-acquired pneumonia is the overcrowding of patients where low nurse staffing levels are a concern as they result in poor management associated with high adverse outcomes rates for HAP (Guimarães & Costa, 2018). In brilliant care settings, understaffing among medical personnel facilitate the occurrence of HAP through relaxed attention to basic infection control measures and care delivery, and it happens because the number of assigned personnel is fewer than the number of staff members involved in the workload. A last but not least competing need that impacts hospital-acquired pneumonia is the use of medical equipment like endotracheal incubation and mechanically assisted ventilation, appropriate enabling patients to maintain life bit present chances for HAP incidences. Such competing needs can significantly influence HAP incidences and it is essential for healthcare professions to come up with strategies to overcome them.

Policy or Practice in an Organization Influencing Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia

In this case, the focus will be on an organization applying infection control practices related to the use of medical equipment in essential care, which has implications for hospital-acquired pneumonia. Protocols have identified the best strategies for disinfecting and sterilizing equipment and maintaining instruments to ensure patients do not contaminate with new pathogens causing HAP. The organization has implemented strategies to manage mechanical ventilators to reduce the risk of hospital-acquired pneumonia. The organization emphasizes that single-use devices should not be reused since they have complications for their effectiveness, safety and performance, which exposes patients to gratuitous risks (Uddin, 2021). The organization developed a strategy for managing ventilator circuits, instructing that they should be charged weekly unless they are damaged or spoiled, in which case they should be replaced, and each patient should use a new ventilator circuit tubing. Additionally, contamination should be prevented by having medical personnel wearing facial protection when closed breathing circuits are disconnected when dealing with highly communicable infections. Nebulizers can become contaminated by acting as a HAP source (Jung et al., 2022). The organization suggests that new nebulizers must be used for single patients and disinfected and cleaned using sterile water between use. Reusable resuscitation equipment has to be decontaminated following the manufacturer’s instructions between each use to reduce the risks of HAP. It is recommendable that all equipment be managed by using basic hygienic measures, including single-patient use and sterilization between uses. Such policies in an organization should be applied in equipment management to minimize HAP chances by elimina