Patient knowledge deficit affects the quality of care and development of a standard care plan. Healthcare organizations use this aspect to measure patient’s level of knowledge in his/her treatment with regard to nutritional needs, disease prevention, and side effects of different medications. Most patients in the current healthcare settings receive limited education regarding their treatment, while others do not absorb the necessary information as a result of ineffective ways of disseminating it, and this affect their quality of care.
Background Discussion
Nurses and physicians have the mandate to provide patients with sufficient knowledge about their treatment. To provide a patient-centered care, a nurse should equip a patient to a point where he/she can be rendered capable to meet his/her self-care needs. However, patient teaching has been done in a way that do not consider the patient’s cognitive level, physical limitations, social and cultural aspects, and the primary disease process and comorbidities.
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D’emeh et.,al (2016) report that the key cause of patient knowledge deficit is the physician’s knowledge deficit on a particular health condition. For example, they consider physician knowledge deficit in pain management to cause patient suffering among hospitalized patients (D’emeh et al., 2016). Further, Nigg (2006) identifies negative nurse attitude towards patients to negatively affect patient education and lead to development of improper care plans and interventions that would affect the quality of care. Other major causes are low patient-nurse interaction due to insufficient time, the inability to cooperate (He et al., 2010), and insufficient time to provide the required non-pharmacological patient treatment and management measures (D’emeh et al., 2016). Arhin (2019) indicates that patient knowledge deficit affects the primary disease management and prevention strategies, calling upon healthcare sectors, through its registered nurses to develop patient-centered programs using their existing tools and experience to efficiently provide patient education.
The strategic plan will address the issue by ensuring that a patient recognizes the need for medications, exhibit his/her ability and motivation to learn, and identify his/her learning needs. The plan will consider the risk factors of deficient knowledge, including; lack of interest in learning, misinterpretation of information, emotional complications affecting learning, complexity of treatment, unfamiliarity with information sources, and lack of recall.
Stakeholders
The key stakeholders are the patients, nurses, families, community, and the healthcare facility management. McGinnis et al. (2013) indicate that nurses play critical roles in ensuring quality patient care in increasingly complex system of care, despite the inefficient and poor structures in most of these settings. Therefore, nurses are required in the strategic plan implementation following their knowledge and experience in patient care. Patients understand the loopholes that lead to knowledge deficit, and therefore will enable successful implementation of the strategic plan. The families are patient advocates in the event that patients are unconscious or unable to make decisions about their care. The management will provide the platform to conduct patient education. Therefore, they will serve as the overall supervisors of the whole process, to ensure that the implementation of the strategic plan is in line with the policies, guidelines and regulations of the facility. McGinnis et al. (2013) report that almost every person has been a patient, is a patient or a potential patient. Therefore, the community should be included to ensure that the plan address community issues that span across different geographical locations, occupations, workplaces, cultures, and diseases or conditions.
Outcome Statement and Evaluation Plan
By the end of eight weeks, the patients will demonstrate knowledge in explaining the state of a disease, understand the need for medications and treatments, identify the need to learn, and show the motivation to learn. The evaluation plan is based on checking the prevalence of the defining characteristics of deficit knowledge. These characteristics include; exaggerated patient behaviors, frustration and confusion during treatment, inappropriate behaviors, and patients asking physicians questions during treatment. A control group will be selected at the start of the intervention, and the group will be compared with the intervention group each time an assessment is done. The assessment will involve answering a series of questions that are based on the defining characteristics, and the process will be completed by nurse leaders. The pre-post intervention assessment is done for the two groups to acquire the baseline data about the groups. Then, subsequent assessments will be done after every four weeks to identify the behavior change in the key characteristics of knowledge deficit.
Conclusion
The proposed changes will promote patient-centered care since patient knowledge is a key indicator of quality care. Patient-centered care is associated with fast patient recovery in different settings of care, reduction in pain and discomfort, and reduced medical errors which subsequently promote a value based care. Addressing patient knowledge deficit ensures that patients receive care based on individual preferences, needs, cultural beliefs and practices, therefore making a patient the key decision-maker in the type of care the he/she receives. The long term implications of implementing the strategic plan include the overall provision of quality of care through improved patient experience and outcome.
References
Arhin, A. O. (2019). Knowledge deficit of sickle cell trait status: Can nurses help?. Critical care
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D’emeh, W. M., Yacoub, M. I., Darawad, M. W., Al-Badawi, T. H., & Shahwan, B. (2016).
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He, H. G., Jahja, R., Lee, T. L., Ang, E. N. K., Sinnappan, R., Vehviläinen‐Julkunen, K., &
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McGinnis, J. M., Stuckhardt, L., Saunders, R., & Smith, M. (Eds.). (2013). Best care at lower
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