Patient-Centered Care
Patient-centered care, also known as client-centered care, is a “patient-centric” approach to medicine, healthcare, and the associated processes and technology. It represents a paradigm shift in how patients, providers, nurses, and other participants think about treatment and healing processes.
In a patient-centered care model, it is essential for patients to always be in complete control when it comes to making decisions about their own care and treatment. Nurses are there to inform and support, but it is ultimately up to the patient to determine what course of action they will take. Therefore, a patient needs to understand the procedures and treatments they will undergo fully, and nurses must aim to make them as knowledgeable and comfortable as possible, especially when treating them for a complicated or painful illness or injury.
As nurses, we need to provide a safe environment for all patients and healthcare providers to ensure the continuity of patient-centered care. Workplace violence against nurses can undermine safety patients as well as nurses. In researching legislation H.R. 5223, I aimed to understand the effects of violence against nurses on safety for nurses, patients, and the implementation of patient-centered care. Please see the attached presentation.
Evidence-based Practice
Evidence-based practice is a conscientious, problem-solving approach to clinical practice that incorporates the best evidence from well-designed studies, patient values and preferences, and a clinician’s expertise in making decisions about a patient’s care. This problem-solving approach to clinical practice encourages me as a nurse to provide individualized patient care that is up to date and matches new medical protocols for patient care. By searching for documented nursing interventions that fit my patients’ profiles, I can increase patients’ chances for recovery.
Through EBP, I can evaluate most current research, understand the risks or effectiveness of a diagnostic test or treatments, and include my patients in their care plan. This allows patients to have a proactive role in their healthcare since they can voice concerns, share their values and preferences, and make suggestions on how they want to proceed.
Please see the attached project I worked on to increase adherence for exercise intervention to prevent future risk of heart attacks. Using the knowledge gained from this EBP project, I can educate heart patients on their road to recovery through proper use of exercise.
Safety
Patient safety is the cornerstone of high-quality health care. Much of the work defining patient safety and practices that prevent harm have focused on adverse outcomes of care, such as mortality and morbidity. As a nurse, I understand all healthcare providers can make mistakes, and it is my duty to support them by identifying “wrong site, wrong procedure, wrong patient” errors to prevent harm to patients. Through medication management and reconciliation, I should check for drug interactions, identify and prevent therapeutic class duplications, and inform the physician of potential errors when he or she enters the patient’s room.
As a nurse, I am also responsible for educating patients on the proper use of their medications, reducing falls, and monitoring patients for deterioration.
In order to enhance my understanding of safety in the nursing I have completed many online training programs through Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). Please see the attached certificate of completion. IHI PS-102
Quality Improvement
In health care, quality improvement (QI) is the framework we use to improve the ways care is delivered to patients systematically. Processes have characteristics that can be measured, analyzed, improved, and controlled. Improving the quality and performance in the healthcare environment can help us with reliable, cost-effective, and sustained healthcare processes in order to achieve the goal of improving care delivery and enhancing patient outcomes.
The nurse can play an essential role in quality improvement. For instance, each year, many nurses, especially those working in the intensive care unit, get injured with musculoskeletal disorders. To reduce these injuries, I worked with my colleagues and used root cause analysis to show the causes of musculoskeletal disorders for ICU nurses. We identified actions to prevent further occurrence of these injuries, identified outcome measures, performed stakeholder and field analysis to point out the driving and restraining forces, and finally identified ways to overcome the restraining forces to reduce these types of injuries.
Teamwork and Collaboration
Patient care is the top priority in nursing. For patients to receive the best healthcare possible, nurses must communicate with relevant professionals about their patients’ treatment plans while also understanding each assigned team member’s role. In essence, nurses serve as a bridge between doctors, patients, and the hospital. Teamwork and collaboration are critical to this role.
To provide patients with the best care, I find nurses in leadership roles should maintain the established team goals, be able to assign team roles, allow for open communication, promote mutual respect, handle conflicts proactively, and be effective leaders. Quality leaders must be flexible while helping their team members and other departments openly and respectfully.
Throughout nursing school, I have learned the importance of teamwork and collaboration and have worked on many different group projects with my colleagues and also during various clinical rotations with health care teams to optimize the care patient receives.
Informatics
Informatics is changing the face of healthcare. As technology advances, healthcare organizations and providers can collect, analyze, and leverage data more effectively, influencing how care is delivered, resources are managed, and teams operate each day.
Though nursing’s mission remains unchanged, our daily work is being strongly influenced by informatics, with particular attention to the accuracy and communication of patient data and care.
During the last sixteen months, I have spent over 1000 hours in various clinical rotations and have used informatics to chart accurate medical information, prevent medical errors, and communicate with other healthcare members to provide timely and appropriate medical care to patients. I can work efficiently on various platforms, including Epics, and Cerner.