Dotson Article
Order Description
In this article, Dotson (2013, 340) observes that the past decade has been characterized by an increased emphasis on nurses being leaders and participants in quality
improvement initiatives. This trend has made it necessary for student nurses to learn quality improvement skills. Dotson, however, is concerned about lack of
literature that explains how faculties should teach these quality improvement skills to the nursing students. Nursing faculties should therefore develop programs that
would provide the senior students with an opportunity to participate in interdisciplinary teams related to planning and implementing the quality improvement projects.
One area of quality improvement concern in the University Hospital C is the time taken for refill replies and patient follow up visits. Traditionally, nurses in the
hospital have taken long time to make refill replies. Again, scheduling of patients’ follow up visits has not been taken seriously. This has led to a situation in
which the patients’ needs are not addressed in a timely manner as well as high rates of readmission. Nurses are at the core of the hospitals primary care, and as such,
they can participate in designing programs that would see quality improvement in healthcare delivery (Boonyasai, et al., 2013, 1025). In the University Hospital nurses
can assert refill replies in less than 24 hours and accurate scheduling of patient’s follow up visits where necessary. As a registered nurse, I need to be able to
assess, evaluate, plan and implement nursing care in partnership with multidisciplinary healthcare teams to achieve common organizational goal: quality improvement
(Boonyasai, et al., 2013, 1025).
Reference:
Boonyasai, R. T., Windish, D. M., Chakraborti, C., Feldman, L. S., Rubin, H. R., & Bass, E. B. (2013). Effectiveness of teaching quality improvement to clinicians: a
systematic review. Jama, 298(9), 1023-1037.
Dotson, B. J. (2013). Teaching the quality improvement process to nursing students. Journal of Nursing Education, 52(7), 398-400.
Please respond in 150 words to below.
I’m wondering how you learned about quality improvement as a process and how most of the nurses in your institution learned about quality improvement? Do most of you
have the opportunity to participate in QI activities and how are the results of QI activities disseminated to the staff? Do you see the nurse leaders/administrator
playing a role in the QI activities in your institution?
