Informatics and Nursing Sensitive Quality Indicators
Hello everyone. Thank you for participation in this session. I will highlight the importance of nursing-sensitive quality indicators. The concept is an essential component of the modern health system. Organization utilize nursing-sensitive quality indicators to monitor quality performance and align initiatives with strategic priorities. Connolly and Wright (2017) defined nursing-sensitive quality indicators as the criteria for determining changes in a patient’s health. The concept reminds nurses about their direct impact on the quality and safety of patient care. In this case, nurses are responsible for establishing benchmarks and identifying evidence-based and patient-centered approaches of delivering excellent services.
The National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) established by the American Nursing Association provide the foundation for making annual and quarterly report on quality aspects (Evangelou et al., 2018). The goal is to build knowledge of events that have direct influence on the quality of nursing care. Nursing-sensitive quality indicators are vital considering nurses’ responsibility in measuring, evaluating, and improving performance (Ju et al., 2018). The indicators highlight the nature of facilities, equipment, and staffing levels. The quality aspects demonstrate the need for excellent interactions between nurses and patients. Nurse turnover is among the types of quality indicators that determine ability to optimize patient satisfaction. As a member of Quality Improvement Council, I understand the need for healthcare providers to mobilize resources and provide incentives appropriate for preventing high turnover rates.
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Quality Indicator: Nurse Turnover
Nurse turnover is a serious challenge for hospitals. The indicator influences stability of health staff and organization’s responsiveness to patients’ demands. Turnover rates means the total number of exits in defined period compared to the average number of employees within the period. High quality care is achievable in facilities with adequate and safe staffing levels. The care team is responsive to the needs of patients with complex care needs such as diabetes. Jones et al. (2021) clarified that nurse turnover has a negative impact on the quality of care. The trend undermines efforts to meeting patient needs and providing high quality care. Increased stress and workloads on the remaining staff cause low work satisfaction, reduced productivity, and increased intention to leave the organization. Kaddourah et al. (2018) focused on the implications of nurse turnover in a specialty care unit.
The authors indicated that nurse turnover has negative influence on staff behavior towards their job. The issue leads to poor patient outcomes, increased infection rates, and high mortality. Nurse turnover affects the care team’s quality of life based on challenges working in a difficult clinical environment. Kaddourah et al. (2018) and Jones et al. (2021) reminded healthcare providers to consider strategies for preventing turnover. The authors advocated for appropriate and efficient strategies to prevent turnover intentions. The strategies include creating offering incentives such as flexible working schedules, work-life balance, empowerment, and others that encourage nurses to remain in the facility for long.
Interdisciplinary collaboration is among the initiatives adopted to reduce turnover intentions. The concept allows professionals from different disciplines to embrace collective involvement in delivering the highest quality of care. The professionals share unique perspectives on evidence-based strategies for minimizing turnover intentions (Rodenberg et al., 2019). Interprofessional collaborative environments help create the right working environment characterized by collective commitment to protecting, promoting, and optimizing health outcomes. Notably, a healthy work environment for nurses is safe, empowering, and satisfying. The setting accommodates individual physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Leaders, healthcare workers, support staff, and others perform their roles with a sense of professionalism, accountability, efficiency, and involvement based on an organization’s ability to create a safe environment for all employees (Schot et al., 2019).
Being mindful of workers’ health and safety creates opportunities for interprofessional collaboration where multiple professionals participate in developing policies, procedures, and changes appropriate for achieving significant improvements. Similarly, addressing nurse turnover requires leaders to advance interprofessional learning experiences and team-based functions necessary for delivering patient-centered and evidence-based care. Interdisciplinary collaboration improves responsibilities processes to make the care team more responsive to meeting patient needs (Schot et al., 2019). In the end, the care team completes more tasks with compassion and energy necessary to sustain the desired quality. Interdisciplinary collaboration also streamlines communication by improving the overall attitude of hospital staff. Notably, nurses have conversations with their leaders to express their feelings and share insights into the best practices for assigning duties and responsibilities. Additionally, interdisciplinary collaboration creates opportunities to ensure proper nurse-to-patient ratio through minimizing mandatory overtimes and hiring adequate staff.
Data Collection and Reporting to Address Nurse Turnover
Data collection and reporting allow nurses to make a positive contribution towards improving processes, policies, and standard of care. The processes remind nurses about their roles in delivering exceptional services to patients with different health needs. In this sense, nurses should provide accurate and complete insights into the events in the clinical environment and interventions necessary to achieve the desired standards. Collaborating with physicians, lab technicians, therapists, nutritionists, clinical assistants, and other professionals allows nurses to remain aware of gaps and improvements necessary to optimize care outcomes (Start et al., 2018). Data collection makes the care team responsive to nurse turnover and related outcomes.
The process allows nurses to share evidence on the various causes of turnover and turnover intentions and strategies available to maintain safe and adequate staffing levels. The quality assurance team, nurse managers, and relevant authorities initiate data collection as a framework for understanding limitations that undermine commitment to maintaining the highest levels of quality. The data collection process could take the form of questionnaires sent through e-mails. The nursing team has flexible time to respond to the questions and provide accurate and complete account of gaps and solutions for turnover rates. The data analysis team captures themes addressed by nurses to understand the common causes of turnover intentions and strategies necessary to enhance nurse retention.
I encourage you to participate in data collection initiatives as part of the efforts toward fulfilling frontline roles at the bedside and organizational level. It is also necessary for leaders to create an open environment that supports honest and transparent conversations about weaknesses in the system and the best practices for enhancing nurses’ mental, emotional, and physical wellness (Jones et al., 2021).
Leaders such as the nurse manager need to work together with nurses to familiarize with turnover and interventions necessary to make nurses enjoy their work environment. This way, the nursing team can share evidence on communication practices, empowerment programs, staffing ratios, and duties and responsibilities appropriate for improving the quality of patient care. As mentioned, addressing nurse turnover requires a bundle of interventions to meet the needs and expectations of nurses dedicated to delivering services that match nursing-sensitive quality indicators.
As nurses, we are responsible for measuring and improving the profession’s impact on care outcomes. A comprehensive view of events such as turnover rates and intentions calls for enhanced commitment to participating in data collection processes such as online surveys and email questionnaires. Active involvement in data collection allow the facility to capture themes associated with turnover and effective solutions for nurse retention. I hope that you will remain committed to collaborating with multiple professionals to help the organization make meaningful progress towards improving quality and maximizing patient satisfaction.