Walden University
NURS 4005 Section 01, Topics in Clinical Nursing
March 23, 2014
Nurses Improve on Promptness of Care to Their Patients
Overview
In reviewing the Nurse-Sensitive Quality Indicator Dashboard, the plan is to target patient satisfaction indicators and develop a nursing action plan based on best practices. The purpose of this paper is to analyze promptness of nurses in caring for their patients and discuss how best practices could be implemented to improve patient satisfaction.
Analysis of the Data
The area of performance selected for analysis was patient satisfaction in the relationship to promptness of care. For the fiscal year 2010, …show more content…
By involving the patient, a nurse can get a better understanding of what is most important to the patient to acquire during their hospital stay. Providing education about procedures, medications, diagnosis, diets and any other information they will need is important to do with each interaction during their hospital stay. Patients feel that they appreciate the promptness of education and answering their questions as they arise.
The hospital already currently uses Vocera devices for communication by implementing the feature of call lights going directly to the RN or PCA improves responsiveness. Hospitals who use Vocera communication in the relationship to the call lights have seen a dramatic improvement in HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) in promptness scores (Vocera, 2014). Nursing staff that are assigned to the patient log into the computer as their primary care nurse or nursing assistant, then when a patient uses the call light for nurse or pain medication the RN gets the Vocera call. When a patient uses the call light for water or personal needs then the PCA gets the Vocera call. This feature allows the primary care staff answer and can respond to the call instantly which is reassuring for the patient.
Purposeful hourly rounding shows the patient and family that the nursing staff is taking an active interest in their needs. During the rounds, the nurse is asking