Introduction
The main purpose and goal of a hospital in any environment is to provide quality healthcare and services to the people. Nurses are instrumental in ensuring that the sick and the injured are taken care of. Nurses have been recognized as the traditional caregivers to the sick and the injured. The activities of the hospitals and nurse are centered towards the creation and provision of quality healthcare to the patients (Basavanthappa, 2004). For this reason, hospitals have put in to place various nursing care delivery models. The models include, primary nursing, team nursing and PPC (progressive patient care).
The progressive patient care model is a nursing care structural arrangement that centers on the provision of healthcare and services to the patients based on their health needs rather than the medical specialty. The health needs of a patient are based severity of the patient’s illness. The PPC concentrates on allocating of the hospitals facilities and resources based the requirements of the individual patients (Raven, 1960). According to Haldeman (1964), PPC is described as “as "the right patient, in the right bed, with the right services, at the right time". Using the PPC care delivery model, patients are allocated resources under the following four elements
- The intensive care units. These are set aside for the gravely ill patients who need intensive and extensive care.
- Self-care units. This is for recuperative patients who are under observation and investigation.
- Intermediate care units. This element is set aside for patients with less medical needs than that of the other two groups. In most medical facilities, the group constitutes about 60% of patients.
- Beds for the outpatient division of the hospital, the department is also known as “organized home care department” (Raven, 1960).
Procedure for implementing the PPC
- Making sure that all the staff of the hospital and the management team are familiar with the concepts of progressive patient care.
- Creating and developing good teamwork by making sure that key people will be involved in the implementation.
- Evaluating the resources that would be required to implement the model
- Implementing an orientation progrmme for all the staff to ensure that they are aware of how the PPC model will be implemented.
- Estimating the cost and drawing a budget for the cost of implementing the progressive patient care model
- Drawing a plan, formulating policies for the implementation of the PPC model, and describing the function of each element/unit that will be established.
- Providing flexible zones linking the PPC and the existing model
- Providing adequate staff to run the PPC model. This should be done by ensuring that patient to nurse ratio is maintained at the recommended standards
- Instructing patients on the PPC model
- Informing the public about the implementation of the PPC model in the hospital
References
Basavanthappa, B. (2004). Fundamentals of nursing. New Delhi: Jaypee Brothers.
Haldeman, J. C. (1964). Elements of progressive patient care. In Progressive patient care-an anthology, edited by L. E. Weeks and J. R. Griffith. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
Raven RW. (1960). Progressive patient care . British Medical Journal,retrieved on 3rd June 2013 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1959304/pdf/brmedj02849- 0077.pdf
