Quality Improvement in the Hospital

2010 Words9 Pages
Abstract
Change projects are occurring at every hospital across the United States to improve the quality of care patients receive and improve their safety while in the hospital. At Kaiser Zion, many quality improvement measures are being implemented, both successfully and unsuccessfully, to improve patient outcomes. The success and failure of these projects and measures has become dependent on the leadership and charge nurses at the hospital. Nursing students collected objective data based on observations from several floors on different change projects throughout the facility and have included recommendations utilizing evidence- based research to improve the outcome and utilization of current change projects at Kaiser Zion at the level of charge nurse and also of nurse leaders and managers.

Introduction
Clinical nurse leadership is an ever evolving and growing field in nursing practice. While there are many different definitions, there are three primary components to being a competent leader: clinical competence, effective communicators and supportive of colleagues (Mannix, Wilkes, and Daly, 2013). To not possess all three qualities can make for ineffective staff training and implementation of new hospital policies. Sherman and colleagues (2011) state that “in the current environment, nurses are often placed in leadership situations without the needed competencies and skills to meet these challenges and other important organizational imperatives. This is especially true for professional nurses who are asked to assume frontline leadership roles such as that of charge nurse.” To put nurses in roles without the training and organizational skills, can lead to disastrous results. In the past, leadership development programs were reserved for nurses in managerial or executive roles but with the rising patient acuity, decreased lengths of stay, staff

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