8302 WEEK 2 QUALITY INDICATORS

Florence Nightingale introduced research to the field of nursing, and with this introduction, a focus on improving patient care has continued to be at the forefront of nursing practice. Improving patient care lends itself to the study of quality care and patient safety, and nurse-sensitive quality indicators highlight the elements of healthcare in which patients are directly impacted by the care provided by nurses.

Photo Credit: Coloures-Pic / Adobe

What are nurse-sensitive indicators? What elements of a patient’s care are directly impacted by the role and delivery of care of nurses? How might these nurse-sensitive indicators change healthcare delivery and the nursing profession for a future DNP-prepared nurse?

For this Discussion, you will explore your understanding of nurse-sensitive indicators of quality by reflecting on those quality indicators that may pertain most to your practice setting. You will conduct a literature search for articles that address these quality indicators and reflect on the connections between the quality indicators and quality improvement theories and philosophies.

To Prepare:

Review the Learning Resources on quality indicators for this week. Focus on those quality indicators that most pertain to your practice setting.

Consider the influence of early quality improvement theories and philosophies on the development of those quality indicators.

Using the Walden Library, locate at least two scholarly research articles to focus on, for this Discussion, that discuss how quality indicators may influence your practice setting.

Select one definition of quality published by any peer-reviewed source that particularly resonates with your thinking about quality.

Identify and select at least two nurse-sensitive indicators of quality related to patient care. Note: Do not select nurse-sensitive indicators related to staffing.

By Day 3 of Week 2

Post a brief description of the two nurse-sensitive indicators of quality that you selected. Analyze the influence of early quality improvement theories and philosophies on the development of the quality indicators you selected. Be specific. Then, cite the two (2) nursing research articles you selected, and explain how these indicators may influence your practice setting. Be specific and provide examples.

TOP QUALITY INDICATORS

Topic: Quality Indicators (QIs)

AHRQ Quality Indicators (Qis) are standardized, evidence-based measures of health care quality that can be used with readily available hospital inpatient administrative data to measure and track clinical performance and outcomes.

AHRQuality Indicators™

Pediatric Toolkit for Using the AHRQ Quality Indicators

Toolkit for Using the AHRQ Quality Indicators

ORDER CUSTOM, PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.