Ideals of Effective Nursing Practice - Essay Example

Ideals of Effective Nursing Practice Number Introduction The ideal medical care facility is faced with risks threatening the safety of the patients and staff, but with effective management, such risks are preventable and or manageable. Being mindful of each other among medical staffs and extending the same to patients; improving health literacy in society, and embracing proper communications are some of the remedies. In Chapter 24, it is evident that health care providers play critical roles in society by protecting public health. They rein in adverse occurrences and medical errors that may compromise patient safety by implementing proper risk management strategies. Given the multi-faceted nature of the care provision, preventing extreme occurrences and improving the safety of patients demands a careful response. A tremendous deal of the duty of realizing the positive results behooves the health providers as an organization and clinicians in their respective individual capacity. Clinical risk management (CRM) is the remedy, involving improving the standard and safe provision of health care among risk managers by: identifying conditions posing harm to patients; and making the relevant steps to prevent or manage patient complaints (Youngberg, 2011). Other potential risk management programs include; conducting research and training programs on the best medical practices, examining medical and financial records for fraud, and managing lawsuits and liability claims. There is need for risk managers to be constantly better-equipped to organize the processes required in handling general risk and liability vulnerabilities for health care providers. The work of implementing the oversight and leadership of health care facilities’ quality assurance departments, which encompass clinician peer reviews, client care systems improvements, quality improvement programs and conformity to regulations requires constant updating of skills through precepting, targeted short courses and team-work. Risk managers for health care providers should have constant improvements of their capacities including: communication skills, planning, coordinating, and execution out of client and clinician safety programs; judgmental and decision-making skills; independence and teamwork, developing the interest of a constant learner, particularly with regard regulatory reforms. In addition, risk managers must learn to stay calm when under pressure and be analytical in their work in order to be problem solvers. Chapter 26 revolves around the need to teach would-be clinicians the importance of mindfulness in their practice. Research studies carried out since the 1980s have particularly revealed that mindfulness education has a tremendous potential to improve emotional wellbeing and general body health outcomes in extreme patient conditions and the society in general. More recent findings have shown the advantages of mindfulness-based programs training for clinical personnel. Youngberg (2011), for instance, established that mindfulness training significantly improved clinician compassion, mood disturbance, exhaustion, and medical error in medical practitioners. In addition, it has been recommended that more mindfulness by medical practitioners could also improve job satisfaction and limit turnover rates. Mindfulness training focuses on techniques that can be employed to limit different psychological and physical ailments as well as the need to be sensitive to patient safety by listening to them. By focusing on the tasks at hand, trainee-clinicians learn to tackle different treatment plans based on priority and with the safety of the patient being the benchmark of all of their activities when they eventually become practitioners. With mindfulness skills, the usually complex developments and ethical dilemmas that come up between physicians, nurses, and the support staff would be no more. Without mindfulness training, nurses could disregard physician opinions regarding the implementation of a particular treatment plan to the detriment of the patients in question, for instance. In light of this, adequate mindfulness skills obligates every participant in a care plan to carry out their expected functions by remaining sensitive to the role of fellow clinicians and share the relevant medical information for the good of patients. Chapter 28 delves in improving the safety of patients through health literacy. According to Youngberg (2011), several research studies conducted in the recent past consider heath literacy as an increasingly imperative part of safe and effective health care services. Health literacy is important because it concerns the skills and capacities of individual patients and their immediate relations on the one hand; and the requirements imposed upon the medical practitioners by the national health system on the other hand. Specifically, health literacy enables consumers to draw well-informed and rational conclusions regarding their health and seek health solutions to common health problems. It is imperative for health care facilities and their agents who connect with consumers to pass the relevant health information to the latter in order to limit the prevalence of preventable diseases and improve disease management programs among patients in society. Youngberg (2011) said health literacy does not leave out health care executives and policy makers, since the two groups of stakeholders play critical roles in the structuring and management of healthcare facilities and the health care system. Individuals with insufficient health literacy oftentimes register poorer levels of skills and knowledge about their status, thus are less expected to comply with appointments or medication regimens. In addition, they are less likely to adhere to health behavior counsel or take the right dosage of medicines; they do perform dismally at self-care. This way, health literacy compliments the effort of clinicians, especially among outpatients, since medical practitioners do not have the luxury of time to attend to their every need. As such, health literacy drastically reduces medical error and turns patients into active participants in their own health care plans. Chapter 30 concurs with numerous research evidences showing that the average health care facility has significant exchange of communications among different stakeholders. Some of the communications are confidential, while others are not. The multiplicity of the communications calls for their proper management in order to realize the maximum gains out of them. There is a need for each team member to have the requisite communication skills and the capacity to turn the communiqués, telephone calls, e-mails, posters on the information on the notice-board into practical steps as evident in following through medical recommendations, self-management of terminal illnesses, and the implementation of preventive health practices. According to Youngberg (2011) the ability of a clinician to describe, listen and show compassion to a patient can have a deep impact on the biological and physical health as well as patient confidence in care. In addition, proper managing of communication among clinicians shapes the quality of working liaisons, job contentment and has far-reaching impacts on the safety of the patients. Given the availability of evidence associating inadequate clinician-patient communication with a legion of malpractice risks, non-conformity to medical best practices among clinicians, patient and care provider dissatisfaction, and inadequate patient health impacts, the need to address medical communication is of tremendous importance. In conclusion, communication in medical practice links different stakeholders providing care with patients by cultivating a culture of inclusivity in the quest for improved care and limiting of risks. It is important to properly manage communications by ensuring that confidential information remains as such and medical practitioners are properly furnished with the right information they need to affect quality care. With proper communications, every stakeholder would feel as part of the system, enjoy their stay at a facility and provide or receive quality care. Reference Youngberg, B.J., (2011). Principles of Risk Management and Patient Safety. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett. Read More