Analysis of Quality Improvement in Healthcare-Patient AdvocacyProblem Area and Current ProcessThe quality improvement project I am planning to implement will focus on patient advocacy. According to Nsiah et al. (2020), patient advocacy is the process by which nurses act on behalf of patients by becoming their voices so as to ensure that their rights are defended and their needs are met. Most nursing theorists agree that patient advocacy is essential in healthcare and it should be a priority in healthcare facilities. This is more so the case given that patient advocacy preserves and protects patients rights, empowers patients, and promotes positive health outcomes (Nsiah et al, 2019). To a large extent that lack of patient advocacy could lead to negative consequences in nursing practice. For instance, lack of patient advocacy leads to increased cases of hospital acquired infections. In addition, failure by nurses to advocate for patients could leads to….

Successful completion of a competency-based insulin pen administration checklist along with successful demonstration of a mock insulin injection would be required before a nurse could administer insulin to a patient using the insulin pen devices. During this training period, all pharmacists and pharmacy technicians would also need to be trained how to use, label, dispense, and store the insulin pens (Davis, Christensen, Nystrom, Foral and Destache, 2008).
Another option would be for hospitals to only use insulin pens that are equipped with a safety needle that provides a passive safety feature that automatically engages after an injection is administered. The safety feature helps to prevent accidental needle sticks and needle reuse and is locked into place throughout needle disposal. The safety needle complies with U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines and appears on OSHA's list of approved safety-engineered sharps devices (Davis, Christensen, Nystrom, Foral and….

Stand/Being a Patient Advocate
Description of the role as a moral agent or advocate for quality and patient safety

The present times are challenging for healthcare workers. Exceptional healthcare system alterations, in the form of financial pressures, regulatory mandates for improving patient safety and care quality, uncertainty of healthcare reforms' direction, technological advances, patient population change and emerging workforce deficiencies, are affecting care in every practice setting. These changes may prove be a challenge to decisions pertaining to resource allocation, and may negatively affect work environment in the health sector (Chiarella & McInnes, 2008).

This paper deals with being a nurse advocate for regulatory agency mandates aimed at improving patient safety and care quality. The nurse advocate's roles here include: presenting to patients the patient rights code of the hospital; handing out the patient rights manual to them; confirming patient understanding regarding who must be approached with concerns or queries; preventing complaints….

Patient non-compliance with medication is a problem that can have adverse effects on patient outcomes. Non-compliance with medication can occur in the in-patient or out-patient setting. Leigh (2010) estimates as many as 50% of all prescriptions filled—between one and 1.5 billion—per year are not taken correctly (p. 1). Moreover, there are different types of non-compliance, including taking medications incorrectly, taking the wrong dose or at the wrong frequency, or not taking the medications at all. The causes of patient non-compliance with medication can be traced to miscommunication, requiring healthcare leaders to take a more active role in patient advocacy and education. Misunderstandings of how a medication should be taken, what the medication is for, and other issues related to patient education can be directly solved via direct intervention and improved communication. However, some of the causes of patient non-compliance with medication are due to structural issues including the costs of….

Nurse as Patient Advocate
Persons who choose nursing as a profession do so because they have a deep sense that they want to help others. Most do not do it because of pay incentives. Those who choose nursing for that reason are soon disillusioned by the long hours, physical and mental fatigue that go along with it. People choose nursing because they have a need to help those in need. hen they become nurses however, the role that they play is often defined by a large, bureaucratic system and they sometimes find that they must choose between their sense of doing what is right for the patient and conforming to the rules of the system.

Nurses traditionally served as helpers to the doctors, performing mundane tasks to free the doctor for other things.. Doctors make the decisions and give the orders. Nurses follow the orders that the doctor gives. Sometimes the….

Nurse Advocacy
After sixteen years of working as a nurse, I realized more fully the impact my profession and the people in it have on public health, public safety, social norms related to health, and public policy. This MSN program has effectively prepared me for the next stage of my career as a nurse advocate who actively participates in public policy development and public health initiatives. I have been strongly influenced by issues related to nurse advocacy throughout the course of my career. This program has highlighted areas in which nursing practice can be applied to helping members of my community empower themselves with knowledge, with the resources available to them to improve their health choices, and improve quality of life for all members of my community.

When I started the program, I was a nurse. I was an experienced nurse who was confident with my role in the hospital, and as….

Lewis, Cheek & Hendricks (2001) support developmental advocacy as a framework from which counselors can promote the health and well-being of patients in a dynamic forum. Kiselica & obinson (2001) point out the community outreach programs may be beneficial for clients but also the counseling profession. This notion is supported by other research including that of Myers, Sweeney & White (2002) who suggest that professional associations can create venues for counselors to share knowledge, training and standards, as well as provide advocacy advancement and help the profession remain credible (394).

Though advocacy programs in the past have focused primarily on the needs and abilities of school counselors and educational representatives, counselors must broaden their perspectives so advocacy may now include all branches of the counseling field. This may require additional training and resources, but will help strengthen the credibility and success of the profession. Advocacy efforts will also help raise community….

Most advocacy groups can help the families of veterans also understand their legal entitlements to support services.
Congressional representatives can occasionally come to the aid of their constituents who are veterans. Lawmakers listening to the concerns of their constituents can bring special cases to the attention of their fellow congressmen and women in Washington to help advocate on behalf of veterans and veterans affairs. Some congressional representatives may be willing to serve on special committees that advocate for veterans affairs in Washington.

Social workers have an obligation to learn about the large-scale organizations that serve the needs of veterans as well as smaller scale community organizations. Even social workers that do not specialize in veterans affairs should become familiar with the unique legal situation of their clients. For example, social workers should familiarize themselves with the specific medical, social, occupational, and psychiatric needs that veterans have, especially the veterans that live….

Nurse Patient atios and Quality of Care
This study reviews the broad level of issues that surround the nurse/patient ratio: a critical shortage of trained and experienced nurses; increased political and fiscal demands from all sectors of society; rising costs internally and externally combined with a rising number of under-insured; and the conundrum of nursing ethics and the ability to foster excellence in care and patient advocacy. We note that there remains an issue about hiring more nurses -- where will these nurses come from if the nursing schools do not increase their recruitment efforts and broaden their curriculum. In addition, we note that the large majority of patients and stakeholders primarily want two things when admitted to a healthcare facility: better paid nurses and more highly-trained professionals who are satisfied with their vocation.

Introduction

Modern nursing is, by necessity, a mixture of complex balance: patient care vs. staffing; procedures vs. patient load;….

"[4] (Bernall, 1992, p. 19)
Though historically this role could have strained the nurses professional relationships with other health care professionals, and especially doctors the modern medical industry has afforded a new way of understanding the role, including an emphasis of such a nursing role in medical school. (Bernall 1992, p. 22)

As this belief has proven to be a long-standing one, it is therefore important to explore a greater understanding of the application of its use in patient care. The particular example of the mentally handicapped / epileptic patient is important as the complicated nature of these possibly debilitating diseases often leaves patients feeling helpless to contribute to their own general health and wellness. In one study the application of a nurse, for the specific role of advocacy was used to study it effects of the patients health and wellness outcomes.

A nurse functioning as patient advocate for 21 epileptic mentally handicapped….

.....nurse assigned to care for this patient, I would strongly advocate on behalf of the patient's autonomy. The clash between patient autonomy and the healthcare system and its representatives like nurses can only be resolved by being honest in this situation. The patient is under a high degree of stress, not only because of his health condition and the fear that brings out in him, but due to other stressful life events including his financial situation. He was also supposed to get married immediately before the bypass surgery was scheduled, and this is bound to add to his level of stress. The primary issue here is providing what the patient needs to keep him safe during the procedure, and if he insists on using his own pump, which he has successfully used for the thirty years he has lived with the disease of diabetes, then he should use his own….

133). This informal power is quite significant when it comes to patient decisions and as such doctors need to appreciate and understand this power nurses wield.
Due to the unique information nurses have about patients, nurses have considerable decision-making responsibilities concerning patients. For this reason, many medical schools have implemented programs, in their curriculum, to teach medical student how important it is to listen to the advice of their nurses. Innovative universities like the University of Kentucky Medical Center actually encouraged their residents to develop a collaborative partnerships with the nurses with which they worked. Paynton (2009) notes that outcomes of patient care improve when collaboration increases and the role of nurses is valued. However, regretfully, this collaboration does not always take place.

Although there is a shift in trends towards more collaboration between doctors and nurses, giving nurses more formal power in advocating for patients, the narratives collected by Paynton….

Inter and Intraprofessional Communication
Patient-centered practice is designed to address issues that usually appear as a consequence of nurses having a limited understanding of their role and as a result of patients not being provided with the opportunity to learn more about the attitudes they need to take in order to make the experience less painful for all individuals involved. One of the principal ideas related to this type of thinking is the fact that there is always room for innovation and nurses thus need to be proactive in their line of work. Considering that conventional strategies are likely to be ineffective in certain situations, nurses need to be able to adapt to stressing conditions and to get actively involved in trying to provide patients with the best service possible.

Through concentrating on intraprofessional and interprofessional practices, nurses can contribute to their understanding of their line of work in general and can….

Care:
Issler is a patient who recently moved with his daughter-in-law who is no longer married to his son. As part of her interest in helping to take care of Mr. Issler, she noticed that he was pale and diaphoretic after a two and a half hour flight. The daughter-in-law took him to an emergency room where he was attended to by a cardiologist and set a follow-up check up for an echo cardiogram next week. Mr. Issler has complained of congestive heart failure and a history of deep vein thrombosis. The cardiologist recommended that he seeks out a primary care provider and check up of his thyroid. As the primary care provider, the patient has also expressed his uncertainties on whether he has hyper of hypo thyroidism though he has been under thyroid medication for several years. In addition to being very pale, he has a large bag of….

Difficult Patients
Mitigating isks from Dementia

Providing adequate care for an individual suffering from dementia presents many difficulties for nurses. Patients with dementia often have debilitating conditions such as Alzheimer's or similar neurologic diseases which are progressive, thereby making it challenging for them to remember, think lucidly, communicate effectively or complete activities of daily living. Furthermore, dementia can cause rapid variations in mood or even modify personality and behavior. With the tremendous number of elderly in society more and more nurses are required to care for patients with progressive dementias. It is imperative that a diagnosis be reached early in the course of the cognitive impairment and that the patient is closely monitored for coexisting morbidities. Nurses have a central role in assessment and management of individuals with progressive dementia. This essay provides some evidence-based practical strategies for managing the behavioral problems and communication difficulties often encountered in this population.

I currently….