NURSE-SENSITIVE INDICATORS OF QUALITY RELATED TO PATIENT CARE

Nurse-Sensitive Indicators of Quality Related to Patient Care

Nurse-sensitive indicators of quality measure elements of patient care that are directly impacted by the nursing practice. The two nurse-sensitive indicators of quality that we focus on are hospital-acquired infections and medication administration errors. Hospital-acquired infections are infections patients get while receiving treatment for surgical or medical conditions. The infections can occur in any setting of care. Hospitalized patients are susceptible to contracting infections if care is not taken correctly. A patient is considered to have acquired an infection in the hospital if they did not have the infection during their admission, and it manifested 48 hours after admission to the hospital. Infections can be viral, fungal, or bacterial pathogens, and the most common is pneumonia, bloodstream infection, urinary tract infection (UTI), and surgical site infection (Monegro et al., 2020). The infections will result in the patient staying longer than initially expected and increasing their medical costs. Medication administration errors refer to any difference...

Any discrepancy might result in harm to the patient, which is avoidable. Most medication errors occur during the administration phase. Nurses are charged with administering medications to hospitalized patients. The most common medication errors are wrong dose, wrong route, wrong time, omission of doses, wrong drug, wrong patient, and technical errors.

Social Cognitive Theory

The social cognitive theory was used to model desired behavior by nurses. Nurses will observe other experienced nurses performing...

…Also, health care facilities had to implement a hospital system for use across all the departments to ensure there were no written notes or prescriptions. Nurses being able to read prescriptions properly is vital for reducing medication errors. Cost of care is reduced since incidences of wrong medications are eliminated or lowered. Nurses wish for better patient outcomes, and they get affected when they make honest mistakes. A medication error mistake will negatively affect a nurse's motivation and confidence. Having a system that assists nurses in reducing the chances of medication errors is beneficial to the nursing practice and will improve nursing care (Schroers et al., 2021). Reading prescriptions correctly is no longer a game of chance, and one can know for sure they are administering the right medication…