This course has been inspiring and influential in my nursing career due to the valuable knowledge I have managed to amass. The journey in pursuing MSN has been interesting and instrumental in instilling helpful information in me concerning designing, implementing and evaluation of programs which are essential to improving the service delivery to patients and clinical outcomes. The learning outcomes for this course were achieved through carrying out evidence-base research, class discussions, doing assignments and designing prototype education programs. Furthermore, as a nurse educator it is my responsibility to assess the effectiveness of the program which have been set up to educate patients on how to improve their health. More importantly, I have learned how to use evidence-based practice and I-PASS Handoff Bundle in my practice to improve patients’ outcomes and meet their needs satisfactorily.
Additionally, from the knowledge and skills I have gained so far in this class I tend to start a program at my work station which will concentrate on prevention and control the rate of handoff-associated medical errors through the adoption of the I-PASS Handoff Bundle (Horwitz, 2013).
Medical errors are a life-threatening phenomenon which needs to be addressed adequately to prevent loss of lives. Poor management of clinical handoff and communication failures can lead to medical errors which can result in negative patient outcomes and high healthcare cost (Horwitz, 2013). Thus, there is the need to introduce I-PASS Handoff Bundle in health care operations. This initiative will ensure enhancement of communication among the health practitioners and transitions are handled with utmost care to prevent occurrences of medical errors and improve patients’ outcomes (Horwitz, 2013). The program can be evaluated on reduction in the number of medical errors being reported, patient stay at the hospital and the number of practitioners using the I-PASS Handoff Bundle comfortably without difficulties (Posavac, 2015).
In conclusion, as nurse educator it is my responsibility to assess the current trends in healthcare and design programs to educate patients on how to address the emerging health problems. It is also important to evaluate these programs to assess their impact on improving patients’ outcomes.
Reference
Horwitz, L. I. (2013). Does improving handoffs reduce medical error rates?.JAMA, 310(21), 2255-2256.
Morton, P. G., & Fontaine, D. K. (2013). Essentials of critical care nursing. Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins,.
Posavac, E. (2015). Program evaluation: Methods and case studies. Routledge.
