Nursing Positive Indicators

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Pages: 4

The effort of improving quality and safe nursing care started many decades ago from the time of Florence Nightingale. In the year of nineteen ninety-six, scholars of the American Nursing Association did a vast research on different areas of patient care to find out the essence of quality and safe nursing care. The studies ended up in the solution of nursing sensitive indicators. Per American Sentinel University, nursing sensitive indicators are elements of patient care that are directly affected by nursing practice (The Sentinel Watch, 2011). These indicators reflect three aspects of nursing care, structure, process and outcomes. In the given scenario, we are going to discuss some of the outcome factors and available data that could prevent …show more content…
J is a seventy-two-year-old, Jewish, male with a history of dementia, having a pressure ulcer in the first stage on his back. He had a fall at home and ended up in the hospital with a fractured hip. In this case, Mr. J has received pain medication and is drowsy, but responding and oriented. The nursing sensitive outcome indicators in the given scenario are pressure ulcer, restraints, and patient satisfaction. These bad outcomes are preventable with a good knowledge of nursing sensitive indicators. Most of the hospital settings have a clear written policy regarding how to prevent nursing sensitive outcome indicators like pressure ulcers, restraint prevalence, and patient satisfaction. It is the organizational system responsibility to teach caregivers about hospital policies regarding these outcome indicators and the ways to prevent it. Correspondingly, the nursing personnel should be aware about the hospitals’ financial burden if a patient develops a nosocomial infection, patient dissatisfaction, or an injury. Medicare or any other insurances will not pay the cost for any unusual occurrences like pressure ulcer or infection; More than that, when one of the nursing sensitive indicator fails, it will end up in the failure of many outcome factors including but not limited to patient satisfaction. In addition, the hospital will lose its value in the community. In the case of Mr. J, there is a great chance to develop a pressure ulcer because he is old, diagnosed with dementia and immobile due to the hip fracture. If there is any positive factor which can cause pressure ulcer, it is the nursing responsibility to take care of that person with intense care and follow the policy. Failure of changing position and assess the skin integrity every two hours or per the policy of the organization will result in a bad