Nurses perform a central role in diverse aspects of hospital medical management, quality assurance and patient care. As well, nurses’ roles largely revolve around monitoring and assessing patients as well as overseeing care provision modalities. This justifies their inclusion in setting and auditing patient care standards and participating in other quality control/improvement activities within their organizations.
Nurses can engage in quality control by monitoring and assessing the status of healthcare services. Marquis, B. L., & Huston (2015) presents quality assurance in healthcare as a dynamic process that requires incremental contribution from the nurse. While most regard it as an exclusive function of nurse managers, Rantz et al. (2018) designate it as everyone’s responsibility. Today, practising nurses offering direct services can contribute to quality control by using innovative technology to collect and analyze data from key aspects that define the quality of healthcare outcomes. Technology can also be leveraged to reinforce quality control systems due to its high reliability and ruggedness. As well, Marquis, B. L., & Huston (2015) add that simple tasks such as ensuring patients fill complaint/compliment forms and ensuring reliable communication channels throughout the workplace contribute enormously to the quality control process by availing reliable data.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Nurses in management positions can contribute to quality control and standards by influencing policy formulation to enhance staffing levels, remuneration and funding for community research and development, which are critical to service delivery. Considering outcomes as direct derivatives of care, nurses can utilize audits to help demystify the correlation between service delivery and patient experience. However, Rantz et al. (2018) warn that outcomes should not always be considered the only indication of care quality. Lastly, continuous training and certification should be embraced since it directly affects the quality of service delivery. Nurses should appreciate the need for taking professional courses periodically.
References
Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2015). Leadership Roles and Management Functions in Nursing: Theory and Application . Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Rantz, M. J., Popejoy, L., Vogelsmeier, A., Galambos, C., Alexander, G., Flesner, M., ... & Petroski, G. (2018). Impact of Advanced Practice Registered Nurses on Quality Measures: The Missouri Quality Initiative Experience. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association , 19(6), 541-550.
