Nursing Assignment: A Comprehensive Approach To Elevate Safety & Quality In Nursing Care
Question
Task:
Prepare a nursing assignment report on the topic “A Comprehensive Approach to Elevate Safety & Quality in Nursing Care”.
Answer
Abstract
Permits & Paperwork
The main concern of this nursing assignment is to discuss about the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) who delivers nationally consistent levels of customer care as expected from health service organizations. There are several standards of health care as outlined by the NSQHS, amongst which standard 5 aims at providing comprehensive care. Clinicians need to make use of safety as well as quality systems from varied Clinical Governance of Health service organizations in implementing this healthcare policy. There are various standards developed by the commission with collaborated efforts from the Australian Government, states and territories, clinicians, private sector participants, patients as well as careers (Brennan & Flynn, 2013). These standards protect the public from harm also enhancing the quality of health service provisions. Hence these standards provide consistency regarding consumer care in the domain of health services.
There are varied permits and paperwork involved in the application of this standard. Patients, consumers, and the overall communities have high trust in clinicians and health service organizations for providing high quality and safe services in health care categories. Thus, clinical governance is referred to as a set of relationships that are generally created by health services. The five components of Clinical Governance relate to leadership and culture, patient safety & improvements, clinical performance, safety environment, and customer partners. In the Australian Health Sector, the health services are majorly delivered through public sectors that are governed by a board that has distinguished responsibilities for managing and services deliveries (Dehghan et al, 2013). Clinical Governance is the activity that formulates strategies setting policies, delegating responsibilities, overseeing management while also ensuring that appropriate risk management and accountability. As per the Standard 5 of NSQSH, the clinicians are obligated for using the safety and quality systems to implement policies and procedures regarding comprehensive care, managing risks while also identifying training requirements for delivering quality services. The clinical governance requires maintenance records and following ethical conducts while dealing with patients in the comprehensive care units.
The governing body drives the authority for conducting business in alignment with the constitutional documents and organizational legislations. The elements of the governance systems are generally implemented by the board, workforce, and all leaders of the organization.
Clinical governance in the health units is the responsibility of all the team members and staff hence decisions regarding comprehensive are to be undertaken collectively. In recent times, Australia has been experiencing issues in managing patient outcomes due to the increased aging population, a high percentage of chronic diseases with unmanned service delivery strategies (Pearce et al, 2013). The decision-making should be practiced at all levels of the hierarchy for improving quality care and performance standards of the health care unit to manage the health care demands that are likely to improve in the future.
It is important for all the organizations for supporting and involving the clinicians in developing, documenting, and communicating the comprehensive plans for targeting patient care and treatment. Team decision-making also includes providing care to the patients by setting the procedures by meeting their clinical needs (Wade et al, 2012). It also helps in ensuring that timely referrals of the patients that require specialist services while also identifying accountable clinicians for the care of the patients.
Decision Making in Groups
Decision making is referred to as complex processes in the groups in which the individuals are required to collaborate in cognitive procedures or determining the outcomes and selecting a specific course of actions for accomplishing outcomes. It is an advantageous process as it collects the views of all the group members thus involving expertise, knowledge, and problem-solving skills for reaching a mutual and informed decision. However, sometimes group decision making is challenging due to diverse group compositions, high conflicts that delay the process. All group members need to practice effective communication for avoiding conflicts, enhancing performance while producing quality outcomes (Bouyssou et al, 2013). In this view, the group was created for developing seminar abstracts. This further helped in initiating the collective group discussions and collaborations that helped us in undertaking each other and reaping the advantage of each other's skills and competencies. In the technological era, we were able t use several platforms like Skype, Google Video, Google Docs for communicating with each other and maintaining workflow. The online discussion replaces the time and money involved in meeting in persons and discussing the facts. The processes are cost-effective and can be recorded for a further reference regarding the work. Video conferencing helped us maintain the workflow while clearing doubts on a timely basis (Bazerman & Moore, 2012).
It is important in the organizational set- up for influencing motivation of workers, working in small or big groups, hence the leaders should be cautious that each member participates and opines about the topic or issue or concern. Since there are varied members in the group who tend to dominate and influence others thus reducing the opportunities of equal participation due to which the decision might be biased and not informed.
Despite diverse group compositions, conflicts, different perceptions, and mindsets were easily managed group collaboration leadership skills. The group decision-making is done after a series of discussions undertaking several points and perspectives of each member hence the outcomes are beneficial for the society. Linking this fact to clinical governance and comprehensive care, the collective group decisions include monitoring the delivery of comprehensive care, implementation of strategies for improvements in the outcomes from processes. The group decision making also involves the reporting standards of delivery of comprehensive care. In the real-time scenarios, the clinicians use the organizational processes by partnering with consumers' standards while providing comprehensive care thus by actively involving patients in their care. It is the responsibility of all group members and staff for implementing the strategies for improving the outcomes. The group decision-making experience helped in understanding the factors of working in a group that helps in professional life. I also gained a clear and concise view that team collaboration is of utmost importance for improving performance while a lack of effective communication can create misunderstandings that might hamper the work. I would like to say that I find myself very fortunate to be part of the group where all the members were treated equally and motivated each other for working hard for the conference.
Challenges and Conflicts
Team conflicts are the most common factors behind low morale, reduced performance, and retention as are directly related to the processes, relationships, and tasks. Conflict is defined as the antagonistic interactions through which actions and decisions of one party are blocked by the other. Some of the causes behind team conflicts are missing information, environment, lacks skills and capabilities of team members, and the clash of values and beliefs. All team members need to be acquainted with likes, dislikes, perceptions beliefs, and values for working efficiently (Lumineau et al, 2015). In cases, the group members are engaged in conflicts, team members should confront each other for resolving the issues that will help in uplifting team morale and relations. It should be considered that team conflicts might reduce productivity, high turnover, high absenteeism, anxiety, and stress. Workplace conflicts might lead to mental health problems that will hamper personal and professional development.
In our team conflicts were resolved by focusing on the behavioural patterns and not the personal attributes of the persons. We practiced active listening skills for identifying the points of agreement and disagreements. In the initial days of the group forming processes, several conflicts were arisen amongst many of the team members, for reducing further conflicts we conducted several group activities for improving team bond and understanding. We also worked out and developed plans for understanding the core issues behind the rising conflicts. In addition to this, the team conflicts were gradually solved and we started focusing on the course of actions for preparing for the conference. Many activities in the classroom environment taught us active participation in the group by resolving issues. We gave each other time so that we could understand each other well, thus appropriate time was given for the team formation which further helped us dealing with the challenges and conflicts. Since the group formation was slow and steady hence low conflicts arose in the later stages due to decision making was less time-consuming and prompt. The reduced conflicts and challenges in the workflow enriched our internal atmosphere due to all members were happy and satisfied. Thus, they actively attended all the meetings and completed the task on time.
Reference
Bazerman, M.H., and Moore, D.A., 2012. Judgment in managerial decision making. John Wiley & Sons.
Bouyssou, D., Dubois, D., Prade, H., and Pirlot, M. eds., 2013. Decision-making process: Concepts and methods. John Wiley & Sons.
Brennan, N.M., and Flynn, M.A., 2013. Differentiating clinical governance, clinical management, and clinical practice. Clinical Governance: An International Journal, 18(2), pp.114-131.
Dehghan, M., Dehghan, D., Sheikhrabori, A., Sadeghi, M., and Jalalian, M., 2013. Quality improvement in clinical documentation: does clinical governance work?.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare, 6, p.441.
Lumineau, F., Eckerd, S., and Handley, S., 2015. Inter-organizational conflicts: Research overview, challenges, and opportunities. Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation, 1(1), pp.42-64.
Pearce, C.M., De Lusignan, S., Phillips, C., Hall, S., and Travaglia, J., 2013. The computerized medical record as a tool for clinical governance in Australian primary care. An interactive journal of medical research, 2(2), p.e26.
Wade, V.A., Eliott, J.A. and Hiller, J.E., 2012. A qualitative study of ethical, medico-legal, and clinical governance matters in Australian telehealth services. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, 18(2), pp.109-114.
