Importance of NSQI Measures
I would advise that NSQI measures should be compulsorily included in a Quality Improvement program to achieve enhanced outcomes. Nursing-sensitive indicators assist healthcare facilities to form a great understanding of the relationship between patient outcomes and the quality of nursing care they provide. In other words, nursing-sensitive indicators are really helpful for a facility to identify the areas of improvement, which is inevitable for designing and implementing a Quality Improvement program effectively. In addition, nursing-sensitive indicators are beneficial to justify the need for increased nursing staff, which is also an integral part of a Quality Improvement program. These indicators can also aid the facility to use the additional nursing staff productively through identifying the areas of staff shortage. Finally, nursing indicators are indispensable to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the Quality Improvement program implemented.
Availability of NSQI Data to Customers
According to me, Quality Improvement data collected on nursing-sensitive indicators (NSQI) should be available to consumers. This approach can benefit patients to obtain a clear view of the nursing care quality delivered by health facilities and to choose their health partners. In addition, this practice is also good to enhance the quality of nursing care provided by hospitals. To illustrate, when hospital managements are aware that nursing indicators are available to patients, they would take due care to make sure that superior quality care is delivered to patients. When hospitals compete with each other in this way to enhance their care quality and patient safety, the situation would contribute positively to patient outcomes.
NSQI and Kendal Regional Medical Center
The Kendall Regional Medical Center specifically monitors staffing mix, which represents the distribution of registered nurses, licensed practicing nurses, and other unlicensed staff. Through monitoring this nursing indicator, the Kendall management tries to evaluate the efficacy of its staff distribution. In the organization’s official website, it provides detailed information regarding the way it has distributed its care staff (Payscale).
Personal Reflections
I wish some NSQI indicators were monitored in addition to the current ones. The major one is that medical errors should be added to the current list of nursing indicators so as to monitor the efficiency of nursing care in a hospital. It is clear that the incidence rate of medical errors can give health providers a great deal of information about the current performance of the nursing staff. This nursing indicator can greatly assist the health providers to review the nurse-to-patient ratio effectively and to initiate additional nurse staff hiring if necessary. In addition, the nurse managers have to consider staff turnover ratio as a major nursing indicator. By closely monitoring the nurse turnover ratio, the hospital management can be informed of the work stress and flexibility in the current nurse care environment.
Potential Barriers/challenges
One of the major potential barriers or challenges to collecting NSQI data is that it requires active cooperation from the part of nurse staff. Here, the problem is that nurse staff are less likely to report indicators such as patient falls properly to the managers fearing of punishment actions (Wolf & Hughes, 2008). Obviously, this situation would notably minimize the efficacy of data collection. Another significant challenge is that it is often difficult to accurately measure the job satisfaction of nurses because a set of common criteria may not suit all nurses. In addition, some nurses may not wish to express their job dissatisfaction simply because they do not want to be noticed by the management. Furthermore, some hospitals struggle to bear the costs of NSQI data collection and they skip some strategic steps to cut down costs.
References
Payscale. (n.d.). Average Hourly Rate for Kendall Regional Medical Center Employees. Retrieved from http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Kendall_Regional_Medical_Center/Hourly_Rate
Wolf, Z.R & Hughes, R. G. (2008). Error Reporting and Disclosure. In: Hughes R. G, editor. Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2652/.
