Informatics and Nursing-Sensitive Quality Indicator Essay

 Informatics and Nursing-Sensitive Quality Indicator Essay

Nursing informatics is vital to the nursing profession. The role of informatics spreads through leadership at the local and federal levels. Quality care evaluation depends on activities greatly influenced by nurses, also called nursing-sensitive quality indicators. Nursing informatics assess data to infer care quality and patient safety, and regulating these activities greatly determines organizational success. This presentation addresses a nursing-sensitive quality indicator in the healthcare institution.

Nursing-Sensitive Quality Indicator

What is the National Database of Nursing-Sensitive Quality Indicators?

The National Database of Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators is a database controlled by the nurses’ professional body, ANA. It collects and evaluates unit-specific nurse-sensitive data from hospitals in the US hospitals and helps in their analysis, reporting, and utilizing them to implement. It was created in 1998 to understand the quality of nursing care using the data on quality indicators. Afaneh et al. (2021) state that the NDNSQI analyzes the data and researches the best interventions to help improve care quality in nursing care based on the quality indicators. They also share them with relevant bodies and organizations for decision-making at the national and local levels.

What are nursing-sensitive quality indicators?

Nursing-sensitive quality indicators are change criteria in an individual’s health status (quality of safety) that nursing care interventions directly influence. These quality indicators are the basis for nursing care quality monitoring. They are tied to routine nursing activities and can be used for benchmarking and ensuring cost-effective nursing care. Afaneh et al. (2021) note that healthcare institutions use these nursing-sensitive quality indicators to set benchmarks that all organizations strive to achieve and assess an organization’s performance in delivering quality care.

Which particular quality indicator did you select to address in your tutorial?

Patient falls are the selected nursing-sensitive quality indicator. This indicator measures the number of patient falls in a healthcare facility.

Why is this quality indicator important to monitor?

Patient falls are a nursing-sensitive quality that is important to monitor. Ghosh et al. (2022) state that patient falls are a leading cause of unintentional injury (above 700000 falls each year), and unintentional injuries are among the tenth leading causes of death in the US. The quality indicator is an integral measure of the effectiveness of patient monitoring and falls prevention interventions. Fall prevention and patient monitoring are majorly nurses’ roles, but recent studies include other professionals, such as physicians and pharmacists. Patient falls are attributed to various factors such as medications, adequacy of monitoring, support resources, and patient education. The indicator assesses the institutions’ leadership ability to develop effective interventions to manage patient falls.

Patient falls cause significant costs to patients and healthcare institutions because most insurers do not cover injuries sustained during care. Patients are left to cater for their bills. Slawomirski and Klazinga (2022) state that, in most cases, patients sue the hospitals following safety and injury issues, leading to exorbitant lawsuits and fines, retrenchment, and fine payment by the cited healthcare professionals. Besides, The CDC (2021) notes that one in five falls cause a series of injury fractures, internal injury and hemorrhage, sepsis in trauma sites, and death secondary to impact, hemorrhage, or sepsis. Patient falls reporting is important because it ensures patients receive the relevant treatment and follow-up, which hardly occurs when falls are not reported. Patient falls reporting is low due to legal implications and other barriers, and the quality indicator is useful in showcasing impactful changes in nursing practice promoting reporting. Thus, patient falls are a vital nursing-sensitive quality indicator.

 

Why do new nurses need to be familiar with this quality indicator when providing patient care?

Nurses need to be aware of the quality indicators because of various reasons. Awareness of the quality indicator will increase their vigilance in reporting the indicator. Patient falls and other problems in healthcare settings, such as medication errors, are hardly reported due to the lack of knowledge on reporting, cumbersome processes, and fear of the legal implications of reporting such incidences. Nurses should also be aware of the quality indicator to ensure they participate and contribute to interventions that address the problem. Labrague et al. (2021) note that nurses’ awareness of the quality indicators helps the nurses participate in corresponding interventions to report falls, such as accurately documenting fall events. Awareness of the quality indicator will also enhance innovation among nurses. Nurses can actively develop and improve current innovations, such as wearable and motion detectors, that help promptly collect data on patient falls from near misses to sentinel/ adverse events.

Collection and Distribution of Quality Indicator Data

For this assessment, I contacted the charge nurse of the step-down ward to gain perspectives on data collection. According to the interview, the organization collects data from filled special reports using standardized terminology in the electronic health system. After analysis, the data is fed to the healthcare database and later transferred to the healthcare dashboard, which is accessible to all professionals. Patient reports are reported as near misses and mild, moderate, and adverse/severe patient falls. Reporting follows the NNDQI guidelines, which define falls eligible for reporting, assessment, and approved recording tools.

How does the organization disseminate aggregate data?

The organization reports aggregate data in various ways. After approval, it feeds the data directly to its website, following all HIPAA and other regulatory agencies’ requirements. The data is also shared with other bodies, such as AHRQ and ANA, for analysis and entry at the state and national levels. The healthcare institution also writes various reports to the stakeholders, such as regulatory agencies and staff, that outline the organization’s performance against the national and locally set benchmarks.

What role do nurses play in supporting accurate reporting and high-quality results?

Nurses participate in accurate reporting and high-quality results by entering data at the point of care. Nurses follow the slogan “any intervention not documented is not done” in recording all interventions. Nurses should accurately document events and their interventions as evidence of care. Accurate data entry enhances care continuity and serves as a reference point for nurses and other healthcare professionals to plan and implement care. As new hire nurses, understanding and participating in reporting these nursing-sensitive quality indicators is vital. Understanding institutional nursing-sensitivity quality indicators will help in accurate reporting, data analysis, and healthcare quality improvement.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

References

Afaneh, T., Abu-Moghli, F., & Ahmad, M. (2021). Nursing-sensitive indicators: A concept analysis. Nursing Management, 28(3). https://doi.org/10.7748/nm.2021.e1982

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2021). Facts About Falls. Older Adult Fall Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/falls/facts.html

Ghosh, M., O’Connell, B., Afrifa-Yamoah, E., Kitchen, S., & Coventry, L. (2022). A retrospective cohort study of factors associated with severity of falls in hospital patients. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16403-z

Labrague, L. J., Al Sabei, S. D., AbuAlRub, R. F., Burney, I. A., & Al Rawajfah, O. (2021). Authentic leadership, nurse‐assessed adverse patient events and quality of care: The mediating role of nurses’ safety actions. Journal of Nursing Management, 29(7), 2152-2162. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.13356

Slawomirski, L. & N. Klazinga (2022). “The economics of patient safety: From analysis to action.” OECD Health Working Papers, No. 145, OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/761f2da8-en.

 

Prepare an 8-10 minute audio training tutorial (video is optional) for new nurses on the importance of nursing-sensitive quality indicators.

 

PLEASE, JUST WRITE THE PAPER AND I WILL DO THE AUDIO RECORDING

 

Introduction
As you begin to prepare this assessment you are encouraged to complete the Conabedian Quality Assessment Framework activity. Quality health care delivery requires systematic action.

Completion of this will help you succeed with the assessment as you consider how the triad of structure (such as the hospital, clinic, provider qualifications/organizational characteristics) and process (such as the delivery/coordination/education/protocols/practice style or standard of care) may be modified to achieve quality outcomes.

The American Nursing Association (ANA) established the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI®) in 1998 to track and report on quality indicators heavily influenced by nursing action.

NDNQI® was established as a standardized approach to evaluating nursing performance in relation to patient outcomes. It provides a database and quality measurement program to track clinical performance and to compare nursing quality measures against other hospital data at the national, regional, and state levels. Nursing-sensitive quality indicators help establish evidence-based practice guidelines in the inpatient and outpatient settings to enhance quality care outcomes and initiate quality improvement educational programs, outreach, and protocol development.

The quality indicators the NDNQI® monitors are organized into three categories: structure, process, and outcome. Theorist Avedis Donabedian first identified these categories. Donabedian’s theory of quality health care focused on the links between quality outcomes and the structures and processes of care (Grove et al., 2018).

Nurses must be knowledgeable about the indicators their workplaces monitor. Some nurses deliver direct patient care that leads to a monitored outcome. Other nurses may be involved in data collection and analysis. In addition, monitoring organizations, including managed care entities, exist to gather data from individual organizations to analyze overall industry quality. All of these roles are important to advance quality and safety outcomes.

The focus of Assessment 4 is on how informatics support monitoring of nursing-sensitive quality indicator data. You will develop an 8–10 minute audio (or video) training module to orient new nurses in a workplace to a single nursing-sensitive quality indicator critical to the organization.

Your recording will address how data are collected and disseminated across the organization along with the nurses’ role in supporting accurate reporting and high quality results.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

Preparation
This assessment requires you to prepare an 8–10 minute audio training tutorial (with optional video) for new nurses on the importance of nursing-sensitive quality indicators. To successfully prepare for your assessment, you will need to complete the following preparatory activities:

Select a single nursing-sensitive quality indicator that you see as important to a selected type of health care system. Choose from the following list:
Staffing measures.
Nursing hours per patient day.
RN education/certification.
Skill mix.
Nurse turnover.
Nursing care hours in emergency departments, perioperative units, and perinatal units.
Skill mix in emergency departments, perioperative units, and perinatal units.
Quality measures.
Patient falls.
Patient falls with injury.
Pressure ulcer prevalence.
Health care-associated infections.
Catheter-associated urinary tract infection.
Central line catheter associated blood stream infection.
Ventilator-associated pneumonia.
Ventilator- associated events.
Psychiatric physical/sexual assault rate.
Restraint prevalence.
Pediatric peripheral intravenous infiltration rate.
Pediatric pain assessment, intervention, reassessment (air) cycle.
Falls in ambulatory settings.
Pressure ulcer incidence rates from electronic health records.
Hospital readmission rates.
RN satisfaction survey options.
Job satisfaction scales.
Job satisfaction scales – short form.
Practice environment scale.

Conduct independent research on the most current information about the selected nursing-sensitive quality indicator.

Interview a professional colleague or contact who is familiar with quality monitoring and how technology can help to collect and report quality indicator data. You do not need to submit the transcript of your conversation, but do integrate what you learned from the interview into the audio tutorial.

Consider these questions for your interview:
What is your experience with collecting data and entering it into a database?
What challenges have you experienced?
How does your organization share with the nursing staff and other members of the health care system the quality improvement monitoring results?
What role do bedside nurses and other frontline staff have in entering the data? For example, do staff members enter the information into an electronic medical record for extraction? Or do they enter it into another system? How effective is this process?

Instructions
For this assessment, imagine you are a member of a Quality Improvement Council at any type of health care system, whether acute, ambulatory, home health, managed care, et cetera. Your Council has identified that newly hired nurses would benefit from comprehensive training on the importance of nursing-sensitive quality indicators. The Council would like the training to address how this information is collected and disseminated across the organization. It would also like the training to describe the role nurses have in accurate reporting and high-quality results.

The Council indicates a recording is preferable to a written fact sheet due to the popularity of audio blogs. In this way, new hires can listen to the tutorial on their own time using their phone or other device.

As a result of this need, you offer to create an audio tutorial orienting new hires to these topics. You know that you will need a script to guide your audio recording. You also plan to incorporate into your script the insights you learned from conducting an interview with an authority on quality monitoring and the use of technology to collect and report quality indicator data.

You determine that you will cover the following topics in your audio tutorial script:

Introduction: Nursing-Sensitive Quality Indicator
What is the National Database of Nursing-Sensitive Quality Indicators?
What are nursing-sensitive quality indicators?
Which particular quality indicator did you select to address in your tutorial?
Why is this quality indicator important to monitor?
Be sure to address the impact of this indicator on the quality of care and patient safety.
Why do new nurses need to be familiar with this particular quality indicator when providing patient care?
Collection and Distribution of Quality Indicator Data
According to your interview and other resources, how does your organization collect data on this quality indicator?
How does the organization disseminate aggregate data?
What role do nurses play in supporting accurate reporting and high-quality results?
As an example, consider the importance of accurately entering data regarding nursing interventions.
After completing your script, practice delivering your tutorial several times before recording it.

Additional Requirements
Audio communication: Deliver a professional, effective audio tutorial on a selected quality indicator that engages new nurses and motivates them to accurately report quality data in a timely fashion.

Length: 8–10 minute audio recording. Use Kaltura to upload your recording to the courseroom, or provide a working link your instructor can access.
Script: A separate document with the script or speaker\’s notes is required. Important: Submissions that do not include the script or speaker\’s notes will be returned as a non-performance.
References: Cite a minimum of three scholarly and/or authoritative sources.
APA: Submit, along with the recording, a separate reference page that follows APA style and formatting guidelines. For an APA refresher, consult the Evidence and APA page on Campus.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:

Competency 1: Describe nurses\’ and the interdisciplinary team\’s role in informatics with a focus on electronic health information and patient care technology to support decision making.
Describe the interdisciplinary team’s role in collecting and reporting quality indicator data to enhance patient safety, patient care outcomes, and organizational performance reports.

Competency 3: Evaluate the impact of patient care technologies on desired outcomes.
Explain how a health care organization uses nursing-sensitive quality indicators to enhance patient safety, patient care outcomes, and organizational performance reports.

Competency 4: Recommend the use of a technology to enhance quality and safety standards for patients.
Justify how a nursing-sensitive quality indicator establishes evidence-based practice guidelines for nurses to follow when using patient care technologies to enhance patient safety, satisfaction, and outcomes.

Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly communication to facilitate use of health information and patient care technologies.
Deliver a professional, effective audio tutorial on a selected quality indicator that engages new nurses and motivates them to accurately report quality data in a timely fashion.
Follow APA style and formatting guidelines for citations and references.