Organizational Systems & Quality Leadership Task 2

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Organizational Systems & Quality Leadership 734.3
YuSon Handy
Western Governors

Organizational Systems & Quality Leadership 734.3
Discuss how understanding of nursing–sensitive indicators could assist the nurses in identifying issues that may interfere with patient care: Efforts to improve hospital conditions, patient outcomes and nursing satisfaction were long ago seeded with the work of Florence Nightingale. These early efforts paved the way for the American Nursing Association (ANA) to create a term linking elements of patient care that are directly affected by the quality and quantity of nursing practice. This term is referred to as nursing-sensitive indicators. Since 2002 the ANA has examined and formulated key areas of patient care that are crucial in measuring the quality of care given. These areas are patient satisfaction, pressure ulcers, patient falls, job satisfaction of nurses, hospital acquired infections, time of nursing care allotted for each patient, and staffing ratio/mix. By identifying any deficits in such areas of patient care hospitals and its staff can be proactive in making any necessary changes to improve both patient outcomes and staff satisfaction ("What are Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators Anyway?," 2011).
In the scenario with Mr. J there were numerous nursing-sensitive indicators that were red flags. By being aware of such “red flags” corrective action could have been taken to provide better quality of care to the patient. The nursing-sensitive indicators can be categorized in the following ways: 1) Patient falls: Mr. J was a fall risk due to his mild dementia, age and recent history of a fall at home. He also had taken a pain med and was drowsy but arousable. The nursing staff responded by restraining him rather than trying alternative methods such as bed alarms, orientating the patient to the call

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