Informatics and Nursing Sensitivity Quality Indicator
Competency 1: Nurses’ Role
Information technology plays an essential role in improving the services given to patients within a healthcare facility. Nurses from all levels, beginners, experienced, informatics specialists, and informatics innovators are expected to have basic informatics knowledge to apply in their line of duty (McGonigle, & Mastrian, 2015). Advanced scientific technology is used to collect and store data, improve customer care and service delivery; it enables fast and efficient retrieval of a database within a healthcare institution. For informatics to be useful, nurses and the whole team should engage in learning the use and application of electronic devices such as computers, in facilitating efficiency.
Competency 2: Quality Indicator Data
Quality nursing indicators include patient satisfaction with pain management, nursing care, overall care, the medical information provided, patient falls, among others (McGonigle, & Mastrian, 2015). The role of nurses is to ensure to pay attention, monitor, and examine these indicators to provide excellent service delivery. For example, in ensuring patient safety, a nurse examines falls. Falls with injuries require more attention; thus, a priority is given.
Competency 3: Technology
Technology has dramatically improved service delivery in healthcare facilities. For example, with online call portals, messaging, and emailing, a nurse can attend and listen to a patient without having to avail themselves physically. This method reduces congestion in hospitals for issues that need not physical attention, such as consultation. Also, nurses can follow up on discharged patients at their homes, monitoring their progress.
Nurse sensitive indicators identify structures of care and care processes, influencing the care outcomes (McCormick, & Saba, 2015). To improve patient care, how services are delivered matters. A healthcare organization should promote proper attention to the patient by staffing enough nurses. This move ensures that patients coming in for treatment are given direct care from a specific service provider, who will follow up their entire recovery process until full health is achieved. Facilities should also provide proper protective equipment to their personnel.
Competency 4: Recommendation
The best recommendation would be the incorporation of sensors and wearable indicators. This technology involves the placement of patients; for example, those with a high risk of falling, to alert a healthcare provider once the patient falls (Degoulet, & Fieschi, 2012). This way, the nurse can attend to other patients and come back only when needed. Additionally, such sensors can be placed on wounds to indicate the progress of the injury, alerting a nurse in case an infection arises. With this type of technology, service provision is highly mechanized, upholding patient safety.
Competency 5: Communication
There are various nursing-sensitive quality indicators described above. Patient satisfaction in pain management is the indicator to be discussed briefly. Pain is a common characteristic in most hospitalized patients. Various pain improvement projects have been used in hospitals by nurses to try and manage patients (Degoulet, & Fieschi 2012). Below is an interview with a health professional on how technology can help collect and report quality data.
Question 1; what is your experience with collecting data and entering it into a database?
Answer: a health care facility receives a lot of patients within a day. It is vital to hasten a patient’s stay since a hospital is not a luxurious place to spend time. Our health facility has a computer at the reception where the receptionist asks personal details, gives the patient a registration number for when next they visit the hospital.
Question 2; what challenges have you experienced?
Answer; in my line of duty, the biggest challenge is dealing with different customers. For instance, for a first-time patient, there may be barriers in communication or the patient may be very sick to communicate, yet they came in alone. Such situations have rendered service delivery tedious.
Question 3; how does your organization share with the nursing staff and other members of the health care system the quality improvement monitoring results?
Answer; after every quality assessment, which takes place twice a month, head of departments hold meetings with their members to brief them on the findings. This way, every member of staff is informed of the services they offered for the given period. We receive complaints and compliments from customers’ feedback programs.
Question 4; what role do bedside nurses and other frontline staff have in entering data? How effective is the process?
Answer; once a patient is registered at the reception, a tag is placed on their arm with a registration number. A bedside nurse has the mandate to ensure that the patient they are attending to is the same one at all times. For this, every nurse has a portable tablet that contains a patient’s details once they insert their registration number. The efficiency is excellent given standard data is available for every patient at every level or department.
Conclusion
The National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators was established to help track and report on quality indicators in healthcare facilities. Patient outcome is monitored over a period of time to follow on the success of these indicators. Nurses are required to incorporate advanced technologies to facilitate customer care and satisfaction.
References
Degoulet, P., & Fieschi, M. (2012). Introduction to clinical informatics. Springer Science & Business Media.
McCormick, K., & Saba, V. (2015). Essentials of nursing informatics. McGraw-Hill Education.
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (Eds.). (2015). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.