D030 Nursing Leadership and Management: Executive Summary Essay
D030 Nursing Leadership and Management: Executive Summary Essay
D030 Nursing Leadership and Management: Executive Summary Essay
Executive Summary
Nurse executive leaders focus on providing a safe, timely, efficient, and equitable nursing practice in their organizations through quality improvement initiatives. However, existing issues like nurse shortage and high turnover impact the attainment of safe and quality care provision (Haddad et al., 2023). The purpose of this paper is to provide an executive summary on a proposed quality improvement to tackle nursing shortage in the healthcare facility with the aim of improving quality and patient safety.
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Purpose of Quality Improvement Initiative
Nurse shortage is a serious health care issue that needs organizational leaders to address and help improve the delivery of quality patient care. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the U.S. is projected to face a shortage of registered nurses (RNs) which will intensify due to the increasing healthcare needs of baby boomers and rising health care needs from all areas of the population (Parry et al., 2018). Again, the problem is compounded by the fact that nursing schools are struggling to expand their abilities to meet the rise in care demand. Again, many factors also impact the nursing shortage issue that include burnout, high turnover rates and insufficient staff as well as resources (Gordon, 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the dire situation of the problem and many organizations continue to face the problem of limited nursing staff against an overwhelming surge in demand for different care services.
The purpose of this quality improvement proposal is to develop approaches and interventions that will help the organization to avert and address nursing shortage. The quality improvement initiative implores the executive management to develop evidence-based practice (EBP) interventions like conducive workplace environment, sufficient staffing levels and provision of career development and growth opportunities as well as integrating nurses’ views and perspectives in organizational planning and programs (Haddad et al., 2023). Again, having a better reward and compensation scheme that recognizes the efforts and performance of nurses will help reduce and even prevent nurse turnover that contributes to the shortage.
Target Population
The target population for this quality improvement initiative comprise nurses since they are the most affected by the nursing shortage in the healthcare setting. Due to the shortage, nurses have to work extra and long hours under strain and pressure to deliver quality care. Working under such conditions increases susceptibility to medication errors and adverse events, job dissatisfaction and fatigue as well as burnout (Perelle et al., 2020). Further, nurses are more likely to leave the organization leading to a decrease in sufficient numbers. These negative effects impact the quality of care delivered to patients as nurses become prone and vulnerable to mistakes and errors. Again, the quality improvement initiative also targets organizational leaders and management to develop better working conditions and terms for nurses, especially non-monetary rewards and compensation to improve overall motivation.
Benefits of the Quality Improvement Initiative
This quality improvement initiative will have several and critical positive benefits for the organization in its quest to deliver better care and attain increased levels of patient satisfaction. The main benefit of this initiative would be to improve the quality of care offered to patients. Having sufficient levels of nurse workforce that is motivated will ensure that they perform better and focus on effective interventions to deliver patient care. This entails reducing and preventing adverse events like falls, developing effective interventions to reduce and prevent medication errors like having a reporting mechanism, and ensuring that patients do not suffer harm from any other issue in the facility (Gordon, 2019). The initiative will also improve communication and inter-professional collaboration, help nurses to implement evidence-based practice care and support. More fundamentally, the initiative will improve the overall wellness of nurses to attend to patients and be motivated to provide care (Parry et al., 2018). The implication is that the initiative will result to immense benefits for nurses and other healthcare providers that will culminate in better and safer care offered to patients.
Inter-professional Collaboration
Inter-professional collaborations are essential to attain the goals of any quality improvement initiative in healthcare settings. In this case, the facility’s management will create a collaborative team comprising of various professionals from all departments to develop the proposed aspects like rewards scheme and organizational culture that supports employees (Gordon, 2019). The inter-professional team will have physicians, pharmacists, and other specialists to develop a shared and common goal for care delivery in the facility. The team will help craft the implementation plan for the proposed interventions to improve quality care in the facility. Collaborative work will lead to faster and better outcomes and save the facility time and resources to deliver care.
Justification of Budget
The cost of hiring and training newly hired nurses is high and makes it difficult for the organization to attain expected outcomes due to the ever-happening turnover. As such, nursing shortage entails significant costs to the organization as it means hiring new nurses who must be trained and oriented to fit into the organizational culture and way of doing things (Gan, 2020). Therefore, having this quality improvement initiative is justified since it will help the facility attain so many benefits in comparison to possible costs. For instance, hospitals lose close to $6 billion each year because of having few nurses and due to the rate of shifting and turnover (Buerhaus, 2021). The average cost of turnover for staff RN is about $46,000 per position. Therefore, having initiatives that help the organization to avoid these costs would be beneficial and justify the investment in these approaches. Implementing this initiative will cost the organization close to $1 million that it can yet through better service delivery and quality care that attracts more patients.
Evaluation
The evaluation of the proposed quality improvement initiative (QII) would be key to ascertaining its overall effects to the organization and the nursing staff. As such, the evaluation of the initiative will be based on set metrics that include collection of data about the number of adverse events, data on the level of attrition or those leaving the organization, and the rise in patient numbers and organizational revenues, especially from the nursing department (Perelle et al., 2020). The evaluation will be based on a pre-and-post-implementation model to ensure that the team can ascertain the changes in dynamics and data provided.
Conclusion
Quality improvement initiatives are essential for executive nurse leaders and even organizational managers to enhance the level of care delivery. Through these initiatives, organizations can attain better care standards and help improve nursing staff levels to mitigate nursing shortage. The initiative will help the organization to attain better services and improve the wellness and performance of its nurses.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2023). Nursing Shortage Fact Sheet.
https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage
Buerhaus, P. I. (2021). Current nursing shortages could have long-lasting consequences: Time to
change our present course. Nursing Economics, 39(5), 247-250. http://www.nursingeconomics.net/necfiles/2021/SO21/247.pdf
Gan, I. (2020). A scoping review of the nursing workforce’s changing demography: Supporting
Baby‐Boomer nurses. Journal of Nursing Management, 28(7), 1473-1480. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.13132
Gordon, S. (2019). Nursing against the odds: How health care cost cutting, media stereotypes,
and medical hubris undermine nurses and patient care. Cornell University Press.
Haddad, L. M., Annamaraju, P. Toney-Butler, T. J. (2023 February 13). Nursing Shortage.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/
Parry, G., Coly, A., Goldmann, D., Rowe, A.K., Chattu, V., Logiudice, D., Rabrenovic, M., &
Nambiar, B. (2018). Practical recommendations for the evaluation of improvement
initiatives. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 30(1), 29-36.
DOI: 10.1093/intqhc/mzy021.
Perelle, L., Radisic, G., Cations, M., Kaambwa, B., Barbery, G., & Laver, K. (2020). Costs and
economic evaluations of Quality Improvement Collaborative in healthcare: A systematic review. BMC Health Services Research, 20(155), 1-10. DOI: 10.1186/s12913-020-4981-5.
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In this assignment, you will propose a quality improvement initiative from your place of employment that could easily be implemented if approved. Assume you are presenting this program to the board for approval of funding. Write an executive summary (750-1,000 words) to present to the board, from which the board will make its decision to fund your program or project. Include the following:
1. The purpose of the quality improvement initiative.
2. The target population or audience.
3. The benefits of the quality improvement initiative.
4. The interprofessional collaboration that would be required to implement the quality improvement initiative.
5. The cost or budget justification.
6. The basis upon which the quality improvement initiative will be evaluated.
You are required to cite a minimum of three peer-reviewed sources to complete this assignment. Sources must be published within the last 5 years, appropriate for the assignment criteria, and relevant to nursing practice.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.
