The Quality And Safety Education For Nurses Essay

Mulloy, D. F., & Hughes, R. G. (2008). Patient safety & quality: an evidence-based handbook for nurses. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Retrieved from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2678/

In October 2005 the Quality and Safety Education for Nursing program was established. This program is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. QSEN was developed specifically for future nurses to understand and be aware of key challenges such as the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are essential to constantly advance the quality and safety of the way healthcare systems work. The goal for QSEN is to reshape the identity of nursing so it includes the recommendations by the Institute of Medicine so there is a commitment to the quality and safety proficiency (Dycus, 2009).

Quality and Safety Education in Nursing (QSEN) was started around 2005 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. QSEN's main goal is to “prepare future nurses with knowledge, skills and attitudes (or KSAs) necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of the healthcare system,” (QSEN, 2017). “Integration of clinical skills with the intellectual capacity to safely manage the complexity of nursing work in key to quality care in a time of diminishing resources,” ( Dolansky, 2013). “It is vital for schools of nursing to meet the needs of today's complex health care systems by including principles of quality and safety throughout the curriculum,” (Lewis, 2016). Within the KSAs are six main categories; patient-centered care, teamwork

In the article “What Do Nurses Really Do?”, Suzanne Gordon explores what nurses truly do. She concludes that nurses “save lives, prevent complications, prevent suffering, and save money” (Gordon 2006). Nurses provide care for their patients in the physical and emotional sense. Emotionally caring for a patient and being sensitive to his or her needs result from interacting with patients while performing the skills and using the knowledge that nurses learned in school. Nurses grow in their skills, knowledge, and attitudes through practice. Quality and safety education for nursing incorporates competencies that all nurses must use in their practice. These nursing competencies include evidence-based nursing practice, quality improvement, safety, teamwork and collaboration, patient-centered care, and informatics.

The overall goal through all phases of The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) is to address the challenge of preparing future nurses with the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of the healthcare systems in which they work. In order to accomplish this goal, six competencies were defined. These competencies from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) are patient centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, informatics and safety. Over a decade has passed since the Institute of Medicine’s reports on the need to improve the American healthcare system. The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses

Over time the health care industry has become more complex. Health care is rapidly evolving and continuing to complicate our delivery of care, which in turn has the same effect on quality of care. This steady evolution and change results in nursing shortages and an increase in the prevalence of errors being made. In hopes of preventing these errors and creating safe and high quality patient care, with the focus on new and improved ways of thinking, The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) initiative was developed. The QSEN focuses on the following competencies: patient-centered care, quality improvement, safety, and teamwork and collaboration. Their initiatives work to prepare and develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are necessary to make improvements in the quality and safety of health care systems (Qsen.org, 2014).

Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) was developed with the purpose of providing professional nurses with the knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA) necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of the health care systems within which they work (QSEN, 2014). However, since its implementation and integration in nursing education, studies show little progress in improving quality and safety in health care delivery (Dolansky & Moore, 2013). The purpose of this article critique is to evaluate the cause analysis and recommendations made by the authors.

QSEN is quality and safety in nursing. It is designed for nurses to continuously improve the quality and safety of patient care delivered. Interdisciplinary friction can threaten the delivery of quality patient care. In addition to ineffective communication and teamwork which can be very detrimental and result in adverse effects in patient care. These adverse reactions lead to the need for incident reports to be filled out, however, some reports end up incomplete or overlooked. The implementation of new skills can change the outcomes in patient safety.

Historically, a BSR was given verbally at the nursing station with frequent interruptions, taped on the recorder or a written paper report without the patient being involved in their care. As the healthcare industry has become more of a patient-centered, the hospitals are participating in a publicly reported government HCAHPS survey- a composite scale score that measure patient’s hospital experience through a metric satisfaction survey. An effective handoff is critical when transferring any medical information of a patient’s continuity of care from one nurse to another. According to the Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality: “all health professionals should be educated to deliver patient-centered care as members of an inter-disciplinary team, emphasizing evidence-based practice, quality improvement approaches, and informatics.” (IOM, 2013). This paper analyzes an overview of nurse’s survey, direct observation on the BSR, a literature summary, nursing challenges and recommendations that might improve patient safety and quality of care.

Learning about patient safety is a quality that all nurses and future nurses need to have instilled in them before they

The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Institute developed six core competencies: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics (Quality and Safety Education for Nurses Institute, 2017). At my facility, it is clearly evident that they have adopted these six core competencies to improve patient quality and safety. My facility created the Office of Patient Experience which supports care that is safe, of high quality and high value. Patient satisfaction is a top priority which is why our guiding principle is known as “Patients First”. Through teamwork and collaboration, we deliver care that is patient-centered by working together in multidisciplinary rounds on the inpatient units. Also, the nursing education department supports quality, safety and consistent nursing care through a database of policies and procedures developed using evidence-based research. Lastly, the nursing informatics department is working towards making our EPIC system more patient-centered. They are doing this by decreasing the redundancy in charting for the nursing staff and finding ways to improve processes which automate tasks. This in turn will reduce the time that the nursing staff spends with their computer and increase the time that the nursing staff can spend with their patients.

The Quality and Safety for Nurses (QSEN) project, developed in 2005 from recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), addresses issues pertaining to how to better prepare future nurses with knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) to continue to improve the safety and quality of care provided by the healthcare organizations in which they work (Billings & Halstead, 2016; QSEN, n.d.). The mission of QSEN emphases the collaboration of all healthcare professionals focusing on education, practice, and scholarship to improve the healthcare system. With the partnerships of national nursing organizations and schools of nursing, QSEN has been developed from IOM reports and integrated into pre-licensure and graduate student’s

After reviewing the six Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Competencies I can definitely see how implementing these skills into the medical field results in improved patient care. Examining this week’s reading assignments I selected practices/ strategies that met each individual competency and they are as follows:

Errors pervade in our lives whether it is our home, in our workplace, or in our society. The effects of healthcare errors have impacted all our lives either directly or indirectly. Patient safety and quality care are at the core of healthcare system which strongly depends upon nurses. “To achieve goals in patient safety and quality, thereby improve healthcare, nurses must assume the leadership role. Nurses need to ensure that they and other healthcare providers center healthcare on patients and their families. Even though the quality and safety of healthcare is heavily influenced by the complex nature

As a competent registered nurse, my career goal is to become a healthcare quality improvement leader, a position that would enhance my commitment in promoting patient safety. I not only believe in enhancing the capacity of other care providers, but also in improving the quality of the healing environment for the benefit of both patients and their care providers. This means not only promoting collaboration with the multidisciplinary teams, but also building the necessary healing partnerships with our patients. To enhance the quality of the healing environment, I aspire to continue analyzing researches for evidence based practices and advocating for their actualization. I will continue focusing my time and energy in encouraging other nurses to improve their skills through formal education, so they can empower themselves as advocates of quality improvement for the benefit of their patients and coworkers.